News

A mysterious Go player named “Master” has won 60 matches in a row on a Chinese Go website lately since December 29th, 2016. People have been guessing the real identity of the player, and now Master have revealed itself as AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence Goplayer from Google and Aja Huang, the lead programmer played the game according to the system’s moves. Huang is the 16th Excellent Alumni Award receiver. 

Recently, Master has been sweeping the world of Go by defeating Ke Jie, Iyama Yuta, Pak Jeong-hwan and Gu Li in. Some professionals pointed out that Master plays out of the box, just like AlphaGo. There are many moves that seemed illogical but Master still did it and the results were stunning. Master doesn’t need to think for a long time and never runs out of energy. Yu Bin, the head coach of the Go team in China claimed that Master must be artificial intelligence.   

After the 59th winning game, Master wrote in Chinese in the chat box that “I am Dr. Huang from AlphaGo”, admitting that he is Aja Huang, the head programmer of AlphaGo. In 2012, Huang was recruited by DeepMind as head programmer. Later, DeepMind was bought by Google and Huang continues his work on the development of Go program and became one of the key figures that contributes to AlphaGo. 

Taiwanese Go player Chou Chun Hsun is the first Taiwanese player that matches with Master. Chou said that he waived the white flag after only 40 minutes. Due to the fact that Master goes differently compared to human Go players, Chou thinks that Master is not human. Although he lost in the match, he did learned something and is willing to have another match in the future.