It's better.
Fascinating news out of the AI world as the AlphaGo project applies artificial intelligence to the ancient Chinese game of Go.
Instead of playing against humans to develop its knowledge and strategies, the AI was allowed to roam freely outside the constraints of human intelligence. This means that it was able to develop its own strategies outside of learned (or innate) human limitations.
The proof of its success? It beat a flesh & bone champion. Not just once. But 100 games to 0.
Ethics continue to be an interesting question in the field of AI, but on some level it's encouraging to see that our creations have the potential to be better than we are -- which could take humanity to new heights.
“It’s more powerful than previous approaches because we’ve removed the constraints of human knowledge,” says David Silver, the lead researcher for AlphaGo. “Humankind has accumulated Go knowledge from millions of games played over thousands of years,” the authors write in their paper. “In the space of a few days… AlphaGo Zero was able to rediscover much of this Go knowledge, as well as novel strategies that provide new insights into the oldest of games.”
