Chinese AI beats top Go masters

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The code of Go, an ancient Chinese board game with incalculable variations, is being cracked by Artificial Intelligence.

The most famous success in recent time is AlphaGo's victory over South Korean player Lee Se-dol.

And now China has also developed a virtual Go master that can beat top human players.

FineArt, a Go-playing software built by China's Internet giant Tencent, won on Sunday a match against Japanese young icon Ryo Ichiriki, in a "man vs. machine" event held at Japan's University of Electro-Communications.

Final result of the match, with FineArt using the black stones. /Tencent Photo

Tencen engineer Liu Yongsheng told media after the match "Our machine is unique because it acts more like human players, like an inner people in the world of Go."‍

This came after FineArt's win in a machine-only Go competition held by the same institute, beating AIs from Japan, France and US on March 19.

Darkforest, a similar AI developed by Facebook, was also beaten by FineArt in the competition.

Developers pose for a group picture after the competition in UEC. /Tencent Photo

Just like what DeepMind did to AlphaGo, Tencent secretly put FineArt online last December to test its strength with top human masters, including the Chinese player Ke Jie.

Ke said he was "very interested" in going head to head with AIs. Rumor has it, a match with AlphaGo is scheduled in April.

Although many companies are trying to copy AlphaGo's success, DeepMind has set a higher goal. The team wants to build AI algorithms that can practically benefit human beings in 2017.