AlphaGo won the last game against Lee Sedol and has completed a near perfect score of 4-1 in the match. That has proven how incredible what Google DeepMind team has accomplished with this AI system and paves the way for future applications of this engine.
As I wrote this morning commenting at Slashdot, this is impressive and somewhat sad. I’ve been following the matches with the same expectation and anger I felt in 1997 during the Kasparov & Deep Blue rematch.
The final result has been similar, and although it has been well reasoned that chess and go are pretty different games and Deep Blue and AlphaGo are pretty different machines, the bittersweet sensation is identical. I had a naive hope in the human superiority just for a little more time, but I was pretty sad after the final game: Lee Sedol seemed really disappointed and sad himself.
I can’t imagine the pressure he’s felt throughout the event, and his face -that’s my impression- seemed to tell us “I’ve failed you all“. He later told in the press conference that he felt he could have done more in the games -I’m sure he’d like to play more games to test himself again- and I wonder what could have happened if the matches would have been played without general knowledge.
Feeling that kind of coverage must have been really stressful. If you ever read this, Mr. Sedol, thank you. And please, don’t ever feel disappointed, you’ve done a fantastic job.
