AlphaGo recognized as honorary top ranker

David Silver, the AlphaGo project team leader at Google’s London-based firm DeepMind, gives an interview before the start of the final match of the landmark, five-game series between Korean go grandmaster Lee Se-dol and the Google artificial intelligence system at the Four Seasons hotel in Seoul, Tuesday. / Yonhap

By Kim Se-jeong

The certificate of an honorary ninth dan member that Korea’s top Go association will award to Google’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo for its performance in the ancient board game in this photo, released by the Korea Baduk Association, Tuesday. / Yonhap

The artificial intelligence computer program (AI) AlphaGo, which defeated go grandmaster Lee Se-dol, has become an honorary ninth dan player.

After the last game of the historic match on Tuesday, Korea Baduk (Go) Association Chairman Hong Seok-hyun delivered the honorary ninth dan certificate to Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google’s AI development subsidiary DeepMind.

The word “dan” is a go term equivalent to rank. The ninth dan is the highest recognition for go players, and none has received the honorary recognition from the association. Lee holds the ninth dan ranking as well.

“AlphaGo has clearly proved its excellence,” an official from the association’s public relations office said.

He said AlphaGo appears to have reached “the realm of God” by beating the go grandmaster.

“In the go community, we describe people in the ninth dan such as Lee that they have reached God’s realm. I think I could say AlphaGo has reached that level, too, as it beat Lee.”

Previously, former presidents Syngman Rhee and Chun Doo-hwan received honorary certificates, but both at best were clearly at the amateur level in their playing ability.

The honorary certificate is also a token of appreciation to AlphaGo for raising awareness of the game in Korea.

Although Korea has had several world-class professional go players like Cho Hun-hyun, Lee Chang-ho and Lee Se-dol, the game has not enjoyed the public attention it is receiving now because of AlphaGo.

The popularity of go used to go up when popular players had victories in tournaments, but then go down soon after the tournaments were over.

The match between AlphaGo and Lee is important for the go community in Korea and the association which saw the popularity of the game wane and hoped to revive it.

Private go institutes in the country have been busy receiving phone queries about enrollment since the match began last week, according to officials.

AlphaGo has also posed challenges to thousands of professional go players around the world.

The non-conventional winning techniques are still surprisingly many.

“There are certain rules of thumb in go, however, that you never go against. AlphaGo went against all of them and still won the games,” said Lee Da-hye, a professional go player and a commentator for the match. “After Lee Chang-ho’s era, the paradigm of go has been rather stalled, but AlphaGo has provided momentum for changes. Professional players have already started studying AlphaGo’s techniques.”

The fact that AlphaGo has no form and soul is another challenge.

In a human-to-human game, reading the opponent’s facial expressions and predicting the next move are an important part of the game, but none of that was possible with AlphaGo.

Park Seung-chul, another professional player, said, “Now it’s time for human go tactics to develop along with the introduction of the program, AlphaGo.”