5 February, 2016, Seoul, South Korea: Demis Hassabis has finally spelled the beans in his latest tweet. Head of Google DeepMind lab, Hassabis revealed that the google will provide YouTube livestreams of its artificial intelligence (AI) software playing games of the ancient Chinese board game of Go against Lee Sedol, the highest ranked Go player in the world.
Match days: 9, 10, 12, 13, 15 March – will be livestreamed on YouTube. More details soon. We are very excited to be coming to South Korea!
— Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) February 4, 2016
The five matches will be broadcasted from Seoul (capital of South Korea). However, the players will be battling out for a bounty of US $1 million. There are many interesting reasons pop out since the broadcast news broke out. One among them is Google didn’t publicize the matches that its AI played against French Go champion Fan Hui despite that the software swept the human 5-0, leading to a paper in the prominent scientific journal Nature.
The company is already pumped up with its success in AI which is utilised inside many of its products. On the Alphabet earnings call earlier this week, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai boasted about AlphaGo’s victory over Hui, almost as if it was a business highlight for the quarter. AI isn’t a business segment at Alphabet or even a product.
“I have heard that Google DeepMind’s AI is surprisingly strong and getting stronger, but I am confident that I can win at least this time,” Sedol said in a statement.