Demis Hassabis, the chief engineer of AlphaGo Program, is a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience graduated from University College London.
In a landmark battle between man and artificial intelligence (AI), the world champion of the game Go was narrowly defeated by his computer opponent.
Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo program beat South Korea’s Lee Se-dol in the first of a series of games in Seoul.
In October 2015, AlphaGo beat the European Go champion, an achievement that was not expected for years.
A computer has beaten the world chess champion, but the Chinese game Go is seen as significantly more complex.
The computer program first studied common patterns that are repeated in past games, Demis Hassabis, DeepMind chief executive explained to the BBC.
“After it’s learned that, it’s got to reasonable standards by looking at professional games. It then played itself, different versions of itself millions and millions of times and each time get incrementally slightly better – it learns from its mistakes”.
Learning and improving from its own matchplay experience means the super computer is now even stronger than when it beat the European champion late last year.
