European 'Go' champion monstered 5-0 by super-AI

[Zenyatta]

Google achieves AI 'breakthrough' by beating Go champion
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420579

"A Google artificial intelligence program has beaten the European champion of the board game Go.

The Chinese game is viewed as a much tougher challenge than chess for computers because there are many more ways a Go match can play out.

The tech company's DeepMind division said its software had beaten its human rival five games to nil.

One independent expert called it a breakthrough for AI with potentially far-reaching consequences."

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Basically, it's a real demonstration of the power of 'deep learning', which are pattern recognition systems based on statistical learning and neural network techniques.

These things have been making huge strides over the last few years, and in terms of pattern recognition, they are actually matching human performance in areas such as speech recognition, vision etc.

Now pattern recognition is not *all* of intelligence (it can't handle things like planning and forming new hypotheses for example, which are still beyond machine capabilities).

But pattern recognition is definitely a major *part* of human intelligence (it's the unconscious, intuitive components of thought). It does now appear that machines are getting close to mastering this aspect of intelligence!