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The Future of Go Summit
Legendary players and DeepMind's AlphaGo explore the mysteries of Go together.
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The Future of Go Summit (Chinese: 中国乌镇围棋峰会) was a historic five-day event held from May 23-27, 2017, in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, China. It was organized by Google DeepMind in collaboration with the China Go Association, Sport Bureau of Zhejiang Province, and local authorities. The event was held in Wuzhen, the permanent host of the World Internet Conference.
This was Google's biggest public event in partnership with the Chinese government since Google China's search engine was moved out of mainland China to Hong Kong in 2010 due to government censorship. The summit was seen as a diplomatic initiative by Google toward Chinese officials, part of an effort to reopen China's market.
The website at events.google.com/alphago2017 served as the official platform for live streaming the matches and providing game records. The site hosted SGF (Smart Game Format) files for users with Go software who wanted to replay the games.
The event featured three innovative game formats designed to explore the boundaries of human-AI collaboration:
Ke Jie vs AlphaGo — A classic 1:1 match of three games between AlphaGo and the world's number one player, Ke Jie
Pair Go — Top professionals Gu Li and Lian Xiao each had their own AlphaGo teammate, alternating moves in tag team style to demonstrate collaborative learning between humans and AI
Team Go — Five world champion players (Chen Yaoye, Zhou Ruiyang, Mi Yuting, Shi Yue, and Tang Weixing) joined forces to play against AlphaGo, testing the AI's creativity and adaptability
The summit also included a forum on "The Future of A.I." featuring discussions on how AlphaGo generated new knowledge about Go and how machine learning techniques could address global challenges.
The website was developed using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as the core technology stack. It was built by Toaster agency, founded by ex-Google creatives, with front-end development led by team members including Pim de Wit and Liam Brummit.
The version of AlphaGo used at the Summit was AlphaGo Master, running on four TPUs on a single machine with an Elo rating of 4,858. DeepMind claimed this version was 3 stones stronger in games of self-play than the version used against Lee Sedol in 2016.
Quotes
“Last year, it was still quite humanlike when it played. But this year, it became like a god of Go.”
“It's perfect. It's just flawless, merciless.”
“I faced a cold, calm and terrifying opponent, to the best of my ability, I could only predict half of AlphaGo's moves. I wish I could have done better.”
“I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go.”
“After my match against AlphaGo, I fundamentally reconsidered the game, and now I can see that this reflection has helped me greatly. I hope all Go players can contemplate AlphaGo's understanding of the game and style of thinking, all of which is deeply meaningful.”
“AlphaGo's play makes us feel free, that no move is impossible. Now everyone is trying to play in a style that hasn't been tried before.”
“AlphaGo's greatest strength is not any one move or sequence, but rather the unique perspective that it brings to every game.”
“Playing games like this will give us new ideas about how to play.”
“AlphaGo's self play games are incredible - we can learn many things from them.”
“AlphaGo could actually broaden the horizon of Go playing. It could bring more imagination into Go.”
“AlphaGo is a wonderful achievement, and a perfect example of what the Minsky Medal was initiated to recognise. What particularly impressed IJCAI was that AlphaGo achieves what it does through a brilliant combination of classic AI techniques as well as the state-of-the-art machine learning techniques that DeepMind is so closely associated with. It's a breathtaking demonstration of contemporary AI, and we are delighted to be able to recognise it with this award.”
Credits
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Front End Developer, Creative Technologist
Pim de Wit
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Front End Developer, Creative Technologist
Liam Brummit -
Technical Lead
Alberto Giorgi
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Producer
Sean Simone
Stack
HTML, CSS, JavaScript