Google let its AI loose on the internet to slaughter gamers

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By Matthew Griffin Intelligence and the Senses 21st February 2017

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Compared to the sterile environment of a lab, for an artificial intelligence the internet must seem like a playground.

If you ever wondered what would happen if an artificial intelligence (AI) ever got online then you’re about to get your answer thanks to Google – again.

Google’s DeepMind division, which is arguably one of the hottest AI divisions on the planet right now, is a division on a roll. One minute they’re beating the world’s best Go player like he’s a newbie, transforming healthcare, and helping Google cut forty percent off their electricity bills, and the next they’re teaching AI’s how to communicate in secret, dream, fight, speak, translate and a thousand other things besides. They’re nothing if not busy.

However, over the years everything that DeepMind has learnt has been as a result of it playing games, mainly Atari games – it’s a hard life. Until now though all those games have been run in a lab environment behind closed doors, but that just all changed, and it turns out that the DeepMind team recently unleashed their AI onto the internet to challenge some unwitting Go players online. Challenging though is a pejorative term in this case because DeepMind, under the auspices of AlphaGo, played over fifty Go games and it won every single one of them.

“We’ve been hard at work improving AlphaGo, and over the past few days we’ve played some unofficial online games at fast time controls with our new prototype version, to check that it’s working as well as we hoped,” announced Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, earlier this week.

If you were one of those players and you’re still smarting from your bruising encounter with an anonymous opponent that steam rollered you, then know you know who to send the counselling bills to.

As to the reason why Google just unleashed DeepMind onto the internet, and just what new tricks they’ve got up the sleeve as a result of it, well, we’ll just have to wait and see. But in the meantime if you’re playing online and being taken to town by an unknown opponent then you might just about to be thrashed by an AI.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Matthew Griffin, described as a "Walking encyclopaedia of the future" by NASA and a futurist polymath, is one of the world's most renowned futurists and strategic foresight experts. A serial entrepreneur Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working across the next 50 years, XPotential University, the world's first free futures and foresight university, and the World Futures Forum which works with the United Nations to solve the worlds greatest challenges. 13 times author of the Codex of the Future series, Matthew is an in demand international keynote, acclaimed university lecturer, and host of the hit Fanatical Futurist podcast.

A rare talent in his past Matthew helped build and run several multi-billion dollar business units for Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, and his ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77+ governments, and many of the world's most respected brands including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Disney, EY, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Pepsi Co, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, and many others. He was also the only futurist invited to talk at the UN COP28 held in Dubai alongside world leaders.

Regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, Matthews mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.