谷歌機器擊敗華裔圍棋冠軍樊麾
A computer has comprehensively beaten a human champion playing Go, the world’s most complex board game — achieving “a historic milestone in artificial intelligence”, according to Nature, the journal publishing the science behind the feat.
《自然》(Nature)雜誌表示，一臺電腦擊敗了一位人類圍棋(Go)冠軍，達到了“人工智能的歷史性里程碑”。圍棋是世界上最複雜的棋盤遊戲。《自然》發佈了這一成就背後的科學進步。
The AlphaGo machine, developed by Demis Hassabis and colleagues at Google’s DeepMind subsidiary in London, triumphed over Fan Hui, the European Go champion, by five games to zero. Jon Diamond, president of the British Go Association, commented: “Before this match I was expecting it to be at least five to 10 years before a program would be able to beat the top human players.”
由谷歌(Google)倫敦子公司DeepMind的傑米斯哈薩比斯(Demis Hassabis)及其同事開發的AlphaGo機器，以五比零的戰績擊敗了歐洲圍棋冠軍樊麾(Fan Hui)。英國圍棋協會(British Go Association)主席喬恩戴蒙德(Jon Diamond)表示：“這場比賽之前，我曾預計，計算機程序能夠擊敗人類頂級圍棋選手，起碼要等到5至10年後。”
Of course Google, a company at the forefront of the drive to transform business through AI, is not just playing for fun. “While games are the perfect platform for developing and testing AI algorithms quickly and efficiently, ultimately we want to apply these techniques to important real-world problems,” Mr Hassabis said.
當然，置身於藉助人工智能轉變商業模式前沿的谷歌，並不僅僅是爲了好玩。“儘管遊戲是快速和高效率開發和檢驗人工智能算法的完美平臺，但最終我們希望把這些方法應用於現實世界的重要問題，”哈薩比斯說。
Applications will combine pattern recognition and forward planning. One early example will be an improved “intelligent personal assistant” for smartphones. Another application will be in medicine, combining images from scans and other patient data to diagnose disease and decide treatment.
應用將結合模式識別和提前規劃。一個較早的例子將是改進智能手機的“智能個人助理”。其他應用領域將包括醫藥，綜合利用掃描圖像和其他患者數據來診斷疾病和決定治療方案。
The ancient game of Go, which originated in China more than 2,500 years ago, has an estimated 40m regular players worldwide and 1,000 professionals, mainly in east Asia.
源於2500多年前的中國的古老遊戲圍棋，在全世界擁有大約4000萬玩家和1000名專業棋手——他們主要位於東亞地區。
Although IBM’s Deep Blue computer famously beat Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, Go has a complexity far exceeding that of chess, said Mr Hassabis who is a keen player of both games. “There are more positions in Go than the number of atoms in the universe,” he added. “Go has more subtlety and intellectual depth than chess.”
哈薩比斯說，儘管IBM的“深藍”(Deep Blue)在1997年擊敗了國際象棋大師加里慍斯帕羅夫(Garry Kasparov)，但圍棋的複雜程度要遠遠超過國際象棋。哈薩比斯是一名非常熱衷於圍棋和國際象棋的選手。“圍棋的棋局比宇宙中的原子數量還要多，”他接着說，“與國際象棋相比，圍棋更爲微妙，體現更深的智力水平。”
Google has beaten Facebook, whose chief executive Mark Zuckerberg posted yesterday that his team was close to “building an AI” to win at Go.
谷歌贏了Facebook。昨天Facebook的首席執行官馬克丠克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)公佈稱，其團隊接近打造出贏得圍棋比賽的人工智能。
Google’s system defeated Fan Hui, a Chinese-born Frenchman who has played Go professionally since his teens, by 5 games to 0. “In March, AlphaGo will face its ultimate challenge, a five-game match in Seoul against the legendary Lee Sedol — the top Go player in the world over the past decade,” Mr Hassabis said.
谷歌研發的系統以五比零的戰績打敗了在中國出生、現籍法國的樊麾。樊麾從青少年時期開始專業下圍棋。“3月，AlphaGo將面臨終極挑戰，在首爾與傳奇人物李世石(Lee Sedol)——過去十年全世界最頂級的圍棋選手——進行一場五局制比賽，”哈薩比斯說。
