Computer wins series against Go champion

A Google-developed computer programme won its best-of-five match-up with a South Korean Go grandmaster on Saturday, taking an unassailable 3-0 lead to score a major victory for a new style of “intuitive” artificial intelligence (AI).

The programme, AlphaGo, took a little over four hours to secure its third consecutive win over Lee Se-Dol — one of the ancient game’s greatest modern players with 18 international titles to his name. Lee, who has topped the world ranking for much of the past decade and had predicted an easy victory when accepting the AlphaGo challenge, now finds himself fighting to avoid a whitewash in the two remaining dead rubbers on Sunday and Tuesday. “I don’t know what to say, but I think I have to express my apologies first,” said Lee. “I apologise for being unable to satisfy a lot of people’s expectations. I kind of felt powerless,” Lee said, acknowledging that he had “misjudged” the computer programme’s abilities. “Yes, I do have extensive experience in playing the game of Go, but there was never a case where I was under this much pressure,” he added.