What Does AlphaGo Mean?
AlphaGo is a narrow AI, a computer program developed by Google DeepMind to play Go, a Chinese strategy board game for two players similar to chess. AlphaGo is the very first AI program that was able to beat a professional human player, 2-dan player Fan Hui in October 2015, on a full-sized board with no handicaps. It then beat one of the highest ranked human players in the world, 9-dan Lee Sedol, in March 2016, winning four games out of five.
Techopedia Explains AlphaGo
The AlphaGo project was started in 2014 as a test-bed in order to see how well Google DeepMind’s neural network algorithm utilizing deep learning could compete at Go. The algorithm for AlphaGo is a combination of tree search and machine learning techniques and reinforced with extensive training with both humans and other computer players. It uses the Monte Carlo tree search and is guided by a policy and value network, implemented using deep neural network technologies. The policy network is trained and helps the AI predict the next move most likely to win while the value network is trained to narrow down the search tree and determine the value of those positions, estimating the winners in each position rather than searching all the way down to the end of the game.
