Our new Marketplace Crash Course is here to help. Sign-up for free, learn at your own pace.
Go-playing robots are the new chess-playing robots
In this handout image provided by Google, South Korean professional Go player Lee Se-Dol waits after putting the first stone against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match on March 9, 2016 in Seoul, South Korea.
Google via Getty Images
A program from Google’s artificial intelligence division defeated one of the the world’s best players at Go Wednesday.
Go is an ancient, complex board game, and the match-up marks a step forward in artificial intelligence. This the first of several games between Lee Se-dol and AlphaGo, Google’s advanced program that learns from the moves its opponent is making. It’s pretty incredible stuff, but before you add more Twinkies and canned soup to your survival bunker, know that we’re still years away from developing the sort of A.I. that can walk and talk and look like us.
We talked with senior tech corespondent Molly Wood — who loves chatting up her Amazon Echo, by the way — to talk about it.
Listen to Kai and Molly’s full conversation in the audio player above.
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.