File photo.
Top Go human players now have been met with challenges from artificial intelligence.
Google has announced that its artificial intelligence programchas the ability to beat professional players.
The software defeated European champion Fan Hui, France national team coach, 5-0 in October last year.
It is the first time a professional Go player has been beaten by a computer program in a full-sized game where the software was not given any advantages.
The achievement was announced to coincide with the publication of a paper, in the scientific journal Nature, detailing the techniques used, on Wednesday.
The software will challenge South Korea's Lee Se Dol, the top Go player in the world for the last 10 years, in a match in March with 1 million U.S. dollars prize money at stake.
DeepMind, an artificial intelligence venture under Google Inc, developed the software.
Its chief executive, Demis Hassabis, said AlphaGo followed a three-stage process, which began with making it analyse 30 million moves from the games played by humans.
Go, dated back over 2,500 years ago to ancient China, is a much tougher board game than chess for computers as there are many more ways a Go match can play out.
The rules are simpler than those of chess, but a player typically has a choice of 200 moves compared with about 20 in chess.
