Daily Report: AlphaGo Wins Again

Once again, artificial intelligence triumphed over man.

In the second match of a three-game series on Thursday, Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo program beat the 19-year-old Chinese prodigy Ke Jie in the strategy board game Go. AlphaGo won the first game earlier in the week; the final game is scheduled for Saturday.

But as Paul Mozur, a New York Times technology reporter, notes, AlphaGo has already proved its superiority by taking two out of three games. And AlphaGo won a four-to-one victory last year against another top Go player, South Korea’s Lee Se-dol.

Plain old emotion might have derailed Mr. Ke, the Go player said afterward. AlphaGo, in contrast, has no anxiety and no nerves.

On the other hand, one of AlphaGo’s creators, Demis Hassabis, who is a founder and the chief executive of DeepMind, expressed a range of emotions throughout the match, posting on Twitter about how “cool” and “incredible” the game was.

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