Chinese AI wins computer Go tournament

Chinese artificial intelligence FineArt beat its Japanese rival DeepZenGo to win the 10th Computer Go UEC Cup on Sunday.

The worldwide computer Go tournament has been held at the University of Electro-Communications (UEC) in Tokyo, Japan annually since 2007. This year's tournament attracted 30 AI players around the world.

FineArt, developed by Chinese internet giant Tencent, participated in the tournament for the first time and won all 11 games it played.

It will next challenge rising Japanese professional player Ryo Ichiriki on March 26 in an official regular competition related to the UEC Cup.

Google's AlphaGo, which beat world-class human player Lee Sedol in March 2016, didn't join the tournament.

About FineArt

Similar to AlphaGo, FineArt uses deep learning to study expert games. It then plays against itself, which is called reinforcement learning, to improve its capability. Games played against human players also contribute to its success.

Developed by a team of 13 AI professionals over the course of a year, FineArt debuted on the Tencent Go website in November 2016. By March 9, 2017, it had played against over 100 renowned human players. It won 388 out of 509 games for a winning percentage of 76.23%. In its 21 matches against China's top player Ke Jie, FineArt obtained 16 victories.

According to the FineArt team, there is no plan currently for the Chinese AI to play against AlphaGo.

The AI technology behind FineArt has a very wide prospect in application, said Tencent Vice President and head of its AI Lab Yao Xing, such as in self-driving vehicles, quantitative finance, complementary medicine, and more.