当19岁的世界顶尖围棋棋手柯洁，在其微博账号上确认自己将与人工智能程序阿尔法围棋展开较量这一消息时，该条微博共有4600条评论，其中有一条写道：“柯洁，你面对的是不可能完成的任务，我们为你感到自豪！”
The game Go is considered one of the most complicated strategy games ever invented. According to the Los Angeles Times, “it was seen as one of the last board games a machine could win”.
围棋被认为是人类发明的最复杂的策略游戏之一。据《洛杉矶时报》称，“它被视为机器能攻破的最后一项棋类游戏之一。”
Ke’s “mission” has gained the world’s attention. In the first two of three games on May 23 and May 25, AlphaGo defeated Ke. In the first game, it won by just half a point, the closest margin possible, but that’s just a characteristic of its playing style.
柯洁的这项“任务”引起了全世界的关注。在5月23日和25日进行的前两场对弈中，阿尔法围棋打败了柯洁。在第一场比赛中，它以半目的最小差距胜出，但那只是阿尔法围棋下棋的一个特点。
“The AI doesn’t appear to care
“人工智能看起来并不在乎净胜有多少，而是选出它判定的最有可能获得胜利的下法。”科技网站The Verge解释道。
“I was shocked,” Ke said in a post-match news conference. “Many of [AlphaGo’s] moves would never happen in a human competition.”
“整个过程让我很震惊，”柯洁在赛后的新闻发布会上说道，“很多下法不会出现在人与人之间的对局。”
This is not the first time that AlphaGo has surprised audiences. In March 2016, it scored a 4:1 victory against world champion Lee Se-dol of South Korea. And in January this year, it won 60 matches in a row against top human players from China, South Korea and Japan on several online Go platforms.
这也并非阿尔法围棋首次让观众们大吃一惊了。2016年3月，它以4:1的成绩战胜了来自韩国的世界冠军李世石。今年1月，它还在数个在线围棋对弈平台上连赢60场比赛，战胜了来自中国、韩国、日本的顶尖人类选手。
It is now further improved, driven by a new and more powerful system, according to Demis Hassabis, CEO and founder of DeepMind, the Google-owned company that developed AlphaGo. Now, It can learn the game almost entirely from playing against itself, depending less on data from humans.
谷歌旗下的公司DeepMind开发了阿尔法围棋这一程序，该公司的首席执行官兼创始人戴密斯·哈萨比斯称，在更强大的新系统的驱动下，阿尔法围棋如今已被进一步完善。现在，它几乎可以完全通过自我对弈学习围棋下法，减少了对人类数据的依赖。
“Last year, it was still quite human-like when it played,” said Ke. “But this year, it became like a god of Go.”
“去年更接近人”柯洁说道，“现在更像‘围棋之神’。”
AlphaGo’s success comes at a time when researchers are exploring the potential of AI to do everything from driving cars to creating legal documents, according to The New York Times. It’s a trend that has caused some of the world’s top thinkers to warn that AI technology may lead to humans being replaced in the workplace. And in a 2014 interview with the BBC, UK scientist Stephen Hawking even warned that the “development of full artificial intelligence could mean the end of the human race”.
据《纽约时报》报道，阿尔法围棋的成功适逢研究者们探索人工智能的潜力，其中包括从开车到创作法律文书在内的任何事。这一趋势令世界上一些顶尖的思想家们做出警告，人工智能科技有可能会在工作领域中取代人类。而英国科学家斯蒂芬·霍金在2014年接受英国广播公司采访时，甚至警告称“人工智能的全面发展可能意味着人类的终结”。
However, DeepMind dismissed such concerns, saying the main aim of the software is to one day address real problems, like reducing energy use and analyzing medical data. “This isn’t
然而，DeepMind否认了这些忧虑，认为该软件的主要目的在于有一天能解决实际问题，比如减少能源消耗、分析医疗数据等。“这并非人类与机器的竞赛，而是把它们用作探索和发现新知识的工具，”哈萨比斯在赛前接受《卫报》采访时说道，“最终，阿尔法围棋的输赢并不重要，……无论如何，都是人类获得胜利。”
