Google's AlphaGo Zero taught itself to become the greatest Go player in history

Google's DeepMind lab has built an artificially intelligent program that taught itself to become one of the world's most dominant Go players. Google says the program, AlphaGo Zero, endowed itself with "superhuman abilities," learning strategies previously unknown to humans. 

AlphaGo Zero started out with no clue how to win the game Go — a 2,500-year old Chinese game in which two players use black and white tiles to capture more territory than their opponents. 

It took AlphaGo Zero just three days to beat an earlier AI program (AlphaGo Lee), which had resoundingly beaten world champion Lee Sedol in 2016. After 21 days of playing, AlphaGo Zero defeated AlphaGo Master, an intelligent program known for beating 60 top pros online and another world champion player in 2017. By day 40, AlphaGo Zero had defeated all previous AI versions of AlphaGo. Read more...