This is a look at a critical moment in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) when a team in Oxford developed a programme using machine learning, that could play against the top Go players in the world and beat them.
Go was invented in China 2,500 years ago and is one of the most complicated games that humans have invented. Master players of this game are heroes in countries like China, Korea and Japan, and it is one of the four arts everyone aspires to master (music, go, calligraphy and painting).
For 20 years DeepMind tried to develop a programme that would outsmart even the best players, and after success against the European champion Fan Hui, the algorithm was pitted against the 18x world champion Lee Sedol in Seoul in 2015.
This is the story of the team behind DeepMind, and the breakthrough that happened during that week, which has been seen as pivotal in the development of AI ever since, as the computer played against the world champion in front of an estimated 60m viewers.
