Google Mastered a Game That Vexed Scientists – and Their Machines – for Decades
Home | Science | Science Features Google Mastered a Game That Vexed Scientists – and Their Machines – for Decades Matt McFarland, The Washington Post , 1 February 2016 Artificial intelligence took a historic step forward last week when a Google team announced that it taught a machine to master the ancient Chinese game Go, a feat researchers have chased for decades.
While computers learned to outclass humans at checkers and chess in the '90s, Go – a 2,500-year-old game – was still vexing computer scientists. Because the game offers players a nearly infinite number of moves – and is difficult to score in the middle of a match – it has proved to be the most difficult of classic games to teach computers to play.
But that all changed last week as Google's researchers brought a fresh approach and wealth of computing power to findings published in the scientific journal Nature.
“It's a real milestone and surprise for me how quickly things have happened,” said Martin Muller, a p..