体坛英语新闻：AlphaGo edges Ke to lead Human vs. Machine Go showdown

WUZHEN, Zhejiang, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Artificial Intelligence program AlphaGo defeated world's top-ranked Go-player Ke Jie in the first game of three here on Tuesday in southern China's water-town Wuzhen.

After four and half hours of play, Ke, playing black, lost by 0.5 points, which is the narrowest margin possible in the game. The game follows the Chinese Go rules with black having the advantage of first move, a set point of 7.5 was later added to white for such compensation.

"My greatest pleasure up to date is to play this match with AlphaGo," said 19 year-old Ke. "I opened the match following Master's style, aiming to see how AlphaGo responds."

Master is an online version of AlphaGo. It had a 60 winning streak in rapid games in January against top Go-players worldwide, including Ke.

When asked about the match in general, Ke said he was shocked by a couple of moves during the mid-game as those moves wouldn't be played by human.

"I have given all my best in this game, but still have room for further improvement," said Ke, adding that he will always be confident in himself and will try to explore the game further with computer program in the following two matches.

With a newly upgraded version of AlphaGo bettered by reinforcement learning, DeepMind's founder Demis Hassabis hopes Ke to help discover potential weaknesses of the program. He also discussed the value of collaboration between human and machine.

"We hope that in the future by collaborating with human scientists we will make a greater progress in finding new creative ideas in all sorts of things."

The three-round games between Ke and AlphaGo is part of the five-day Future of Go Summit.