Alpha Go defeats world’s top Go player. What’s next?

What does the research team behind AlphaGo do next after winning the three-game match Saturday (May 27) against Ke Jie — the world’s top Go player — at the Future of Go Summit in Wuzhen, China?

“Throw their energy into the next set of grand challenges, developing advanced general algorithms that could one day help scientists as they tackle some of our most complex problems, such as finding new cures for diseases, dramatically reducing energy consumption, or inventing revolutionary new materials,” says DeepMind Technologies CEO Demis Hassabis.

Academic paper, Go teaching tool

But it’s “not the end of our work with the Go community,” he adds. “We plan to publish one final academic paper later this year that will detail the extensive set of improvements we made to the algorithms’ efficiency and potential to be generalised across a broader set of problems.”

Already in the works (with Jie’s collaboration): a teaching tool that “will show AlphaGo’s analysis of Go positions, providing an insight into how the program thinks, and hopefully giving all players and fans the opportunity to see the game through the lens of AlphaGo.”

Ke Jie plays the final match (credit: DeepMind)

DeepMind is also “publishing a special set of 50 AlphaGo vs AlphaGo games, played at full-length time controls, which we believe contain many new and interesting ideas and strategies.”

Deep Mind | The Future of Go Summit, Match Three: Ke Jie & AlphaGo

Deep Mind | Exploring the mysteries of Go with AlphaGo and China’s top players

DeepMind | Demis Hassabis on AlphaGo: its legacy and the ‘Future of Go Summit’ in Wuzhen, China