World's Best Go Player Retires As He Can't Win Against AI, 'An Entity That Can't Be Defeated'

Artificial intelligence (AI) is definitely the thing to look for in tech today. It is advancing at an accelerating rate and is simplifying complex things in life. And now, it has made a legendary Go player literally quit the arena forever.

Go is a Chinese strategy game that is known to be notoriously difficult. The game is played on a 19x19 grid with black and white stones. The idea is to gain more territory on the board, just like chess, but unlike chess which has 20 moves, Go has 200.

Lee Sedol from South Korea is an 18-time winning master Go player who is also the only human to ever beat the AlphaGo software developed by Google's subsidiary Deepmind.

In 2016, he took part in a five-match showdown against AlphaGo, where he lost four times and won once. However, recently he announced his retirement on South Korea's Yonhap news agency, "I'm not at the top even if I become the number one. There is an entity that cannot be defeated."

Upon hearing about Lee Se-dol¡¯s retirement, Deepmind¡¯s CEO Demis Hassabis said "On behalf of the whole AlphaGo team at DeepMind, I'd like to congratulate Lee Sedol for his legendary decade at the top of the game, and wish him the very best for the future.¡±

He further added, "During the AlphaGo matches, he demonstrated true warrior spirit and kept us on the edges of our seats to the very end."

Even though he announced his retirement, he is due to play against another AI bot dubbed HanDol, this time made by South Korea¡¯s NHN Entertainment Corp. This AI bot has already taken down country¡¯s top 5 Go players.

The AI will be giving Lee Sedol a two-stone head-start to catch up with the AI. "Even with a two-stone advantage, I feel like I will lose the first game to HanDol. These days, I don't follow Go news. I wanted to play comfortably against HanDol as I have already retired, though I will do my best."

Has the era of AI truly begun? Is this the end of human intelligence?