Lee Sedol engages in five arduous battles against AlphaGo.

When Lee Sedol, one of the greatest players of the strategy board game Go,was defeated by the Google DeepMind computer program AlphaGo earlier this month, it marked a milestone in the development of artificial intelligence.

AlphaGo is capable of advanced self-learning and evolution. It improves after each match based on its built-in deep-learning mechanism, said Wang Lei, a professor of management at Zhejiang University. Moreover, AlphaGo is insulated from emotional factors that often thwart human judgment and rational decision-making, she said.

“Regardless of the game’s result this is not the end of artificial intelligence,” Wang said. “For human beings, it is a new path to self-understanding and self-discovery.”

Zhou Cheng, a professor of philosophy at Peking University, said, “A game of Go is not the last bastion of human intellect.” Far less sophisticated than human brains, computers cannot set goals themselves, so they remain mere tools for human beings. As computer science and technologies continue to develop, human brains will be liberated for better causes, he said.

Zhou also pointed out that, artificial intelligence is still subject to human control, given that neither traditional nor quantum algorithms can truly give computers free will.
 

Cambridge University plans to establish a center staffed by a team of philosophers, historians, psychologists, legal scholars and technology experts to study the implications and ethics of artificial intelligence, Zhou said. “Such an initiative is proactive since it is necessary to set boundaries to prevent artificial intelligence acquiring volition,” Zhou said.

Pan Yuefei and Zhang Jie are reporters at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.