The Most Incredible Science Events Of 2016

An Artificial Intelligence Becomes The World Go Champion

For years, artificial intelligence researchers have been pitting their creations against humans in various competitions. Several years ago, IBM’s Watson became the first computer to defeat human players on Jeopardy, but the most famous case of an AI system defeating humans happened in 1997 when IBM’s Deep Blue crushed chess champion Garry Kasparov. In 2016, an artificial intelligence defeated a human Go champion for the first time, a feat which many computer researchers predicted would be impossible due to the complexity of the game.