The traditional Chinese game of Go has been on the mind of the folks at Google for some time. While the complex game of chess has long been reduced to algorithmic success by computers, Go makes chess look like CandyLand. But this week, the AlphaGo AI powered by Google’s DeepMind has the possibility of beating the best in the world.
Google has already set up a live stream on Youtube for the event, which will occur at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, Korea beginning on March 9 at 1:00pm KST. For those of us stateside, that translates to March 8th at 11pm EST or 8pm PST. The $1 million 5-match game will pit AlphaGo against the champion of the game for more than a decade, Lee Sedol.
This isn’t the first time AlphaGo has taken on tough competition: in October, the program swept European champion Fan Hui in a five-game match on the professional 19-by-19 Go board with no handicaps. But Hui is only ranked ‘2 dan,’ while Sedol is ranked ‘9 dan,’ the maximum ranking of supremacy for a Go player.
Matches will continue throughout the week, and the tense competition will likely make it a historic event.
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If you’re not into all that clicking, we’ve embedded the livestream for the first game below:
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