World’s No. 1 Go player to compete against Chinese AI

Ke Jie, the world’s top-ranked player of the Chinese chess game Go, announced that he will resume playing against Artificial Intelligence (AI) Go players and will battle with domestically developed AI player Tianrang in April 2018, according to China Youth Daily.

Chinese Go player Ke Jie, left, competes against Google's artificial intelligence (AI) program AlphaGo, as Google DeepMind's lead programmer Aja Huang sits nearby at the second game of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match during the Future of Go Summit on 25 May 2017. [Photo: IC]

In May 2017, Ke Jie announced that he would never again compete with AI Go players after a 0-3 defeat by Google's AlphaGo. He said that the experience of playing against an AI opponent was too painful.

Ke Jie announced that he will play against AI Go player Tianrang, developed by Shanghai Tianrang Inc., in the 2018 world AI Go competition, after getting his fifth world championship in Langfang, Heibei Province on Tuesday.  

Ke, the world’s youngest Go champion, said that 2017 had been a period of self-doubt after his defeat by the Google AI. But he said that he has recognized it is as important to try one’s best as it is to win the game.

The 2018 world AI Go competition will be held in Fuzhou, capital city of China’s Fujian Province, in late April 2018. AI competitors for the tournament include Tianrang from Shanghai, DeepZenGo from Japan, and CGI from Taiwan.

The AI Go player Tianrang will be helped by a mechanical arm developed at China’s Fuzhou University, instead of relying on a human to place the chess pieces on the board.

Google DeepMind's AlphaGo has since retired from competition, and will not be playing in the tournament.