AlphaZero is a machine capable of defeating the most complex board games for the human mind, based only on its own learning experience, not on accumulated human knowledge.
Machine learning is changing the world in ways that we are just beginning to appreciate. But could it change the way we do science and the reasons why we do science?
It’s time programmers looked out old computer text adventures like Zork and Colossal Cave from the 1970s and 1980s.
The South Korean go player Lee Sedol after a 2016 match against Google’s artificial-intelligence program AlphaGo. Sedol, ranked 9th in the world, lost 4-1.
Lee Jin-man/Flickr
The history of human-machine collaboration suggests that AI will evolve into a “cognitive partner” to humankind rather than as all-powerful, all-knowing, labour replacing robots.
Better than human: the artificial intelligence that learned to master Go in just three days.
Shutterstock/maxuser
The new AlphaGo Zero artificial intelligence took just days to learn to play Go from scratch, with no human intervention. It even learned strategies never seen before in human play.
All those neurones: if only a machine could really think like a human.
MriMan/shutterstock
Computers today are fast and powerful but they still can’t think like a human when it comes to some tasks we find easy. That’s why tech companies are turning to neuroscience for help.
One down, two to go: Google’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo wins the first game of Go against Chinese grandmaster player Ke Jie, in May 2017.
EPA/Wu Hong
Twenty years after Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess, artificial intelligence can make games more fun, and perhaps even endlessly enjoyable, if it learns to adapt.