South Korean national Lee Se-dol, world champion of the ancient board game Go, readied himself Tuesday to take on Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) machine AlphaGo in a game that will pit man against machine.
At a press conference in Seoul today, Se-dol spoke about his fears and expectations for the highly-anticipated match, which is due to kick off on Wednesday afternoon.
He was joined on stage by Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google’s AI startup DeepMind, which developed AlphaGo, and Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO and the current executive chairman of Alphabet, according to witness reports.
Se-dol, who last month exuded confidence about the game, said he was “a little bit nervous” about taking on AlphaGo in the five matches this week, Yonhap news agency reports.
“I now think AlphaGo can imitate human intuition a little bit.”
Lee, who has won 18 international Go events, said he has lowered his expectations after listening to a presentation by Hassabis, which gave him an idea of what the program is capable of.
“If the maximum number of human calculation on possible moves is 1,000, the computer is thinking millions and it is narrowing it down,” he said. “I thought it can be a threat.”
Go, the world’s oldest board game, originated in China more than 2,500 years ago. It is a complex strategic game with more possibilities than chess.
Earlier this year, AlphaGo beat Chinese-French Go champion Fan Hui by 5-0. It was the first time that an AI has defeated an unhandicapped human being
