Google's DeepMind Beats Go Champion in Historic Moment for Artificial Intelligence

As reported by The Telegraph: A computer program has beaten the world champion of one of civilisation's oldest board games for the first time in history.

Lee Se-dol, a 33-year-old South Korean, resigned the first of five matches of the fiendishly complex strategy game against the AlphaGo program, which is built by the Google-owned British company DeepMind.

The game, which lasted a brief 3.5 hours, was officially declared as a win for AlphaGo in Seoul today. Commentators called it a "superb" game that would be studied for years to come.

The breakthrough is seen as a watershed moment for artificial intelligence, a milestone potentially more significant than IBM defeating the world champion Gary Kasparov at chess in 1997. Go takes a lifetime to master and unlike chess, a computer cannot play by simply assessing all possible moves but must rely on something akin to intuition.

#AlphaGo WINS!!!! We landed it on the moon. So proud of the team!! Respect to the amazing Lee Sedol too— Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) March 9, 2016

Well done #AlphaGo!! Fantastic game from Lee Sedol. Four more games, but indubitably a new milestone has been reached in AI research today.— Edward Grefenstette (@egrefen) March 9, 2016

The game involves two players putting black and white markers on a 19-by-19 grid. It is said to have more possible playing permutations than the number of atoms in the universe.

The AlphaGo program, which uses algorithms as practiced by analyzing data from 100,000 professional human games and playing itself some 30 million times.

Mr Lee, who has been a professional Go player since the age of 12, and won 18 international titles, said at a pre-game press conference: “It would be a computer’s victory if it wins even one game.”

“I believe human intuition and human senses are too advanced for artificial intelligence to catch up. I doubt how far AlphaGo can mimic such things.”

After the game he admitted that he was "shocked".

"I admit I am in shock, I did not think I would lose. I couldn't foresee that AlphaGo would play in such a perfect manner. I in turn would like to express my respect to the team who developed this amazing program," he said.

Four more games will be played over the course of this week, although AlphaGo would only have to win two of those to be crowned the victor.

What is Go?

Go is a 3000 year old Chinese board game, making it probably the oldest game still played in its original form. It literally means "encircling game" although it has different names in Korea, China and Japan - the Chinese is Weiqi, Korean is Baduk, and Japanese is Go.

How do you play?

Each game has two players, who alternately place black or white stones on the 19 x 19 grid on the board. The objective is to surround territory - like two people dividing up a map and trying to draw borders. You score the game by the number of stones you are able to surround.

Where did it come from?

The game was thought to have been invented by an ancient Chinese emperor in order to teach his son about political strategy. It was considered one of the four marks of a Chinese scholar, along with calligraphy, painting and playing a musical instrument.

How hard is it really?

Despite the relatively simple rules, the game is devilishly complex in how it plays out. It is primarily a game of strategy and imagination, and the number of possible games is vast (10^761 compared to 10^120 possible in chess).

Defeating a professional human player at Go has been seen as one of the "holy grails" of artificial intelligence research, due to its high level of complexity.

BMW's Vision Next 100 Is A Wild Shapeshifter From The 22nd Century

As reported by Jalopnik: I have to hand it to BMW. In celebrating its 100th birthday, the brand could have easily cranked out some retro roadster or sedan concept. As cool as that would have been, I like what it did instead: looking to the far future of cars and driving. Meet the BMW Vision Next 100 Concept.

Starting with a special event in Munich today, BMW is unveiling the first of four concepts for each of its four brands—BMW, Mini, Rolls, and motorcycles—that showcase some wild dreams of tomorrow. Those cars will be shown at global events later this year, but the BMW concept is here now.

So what the hell is this thing? Like the cars of the future will be, for better or worse, it can switch between autonomous and human-driven modes. (At least the second one is an option.) Those modes are called Ease and Boost, respectively. The interior controls transform to meet the needs of each mode.

Boost is interesting because it takes the whole “Ultimate Driving Machine” thing to the next level by using augmented reality to help the driver become the best driver they can be. The car shows the ideal racing line, steering points and speeds, BMW says. In Ease, the car is completely self-driving.

Then there’s the “skin” of the car. As Top Gear explains, inside the triangular “scales” turn red to warn the driver of upcoming hazards, and as the front wheels turn, the bodywork wrapped around them stretches and contorts.

I don’t know how much better that would be than conventional wheels and tires, but it’s neat to look at and think about.

Obviously, it’s not meant for production—a lot of this technology has to be invented first before that can happen. But as tends to happen with BMW concepts, it could preview some future design. It’s easy to imagine this sleek four-door setup in a BMW i5 or something similar.

I’m intrigued by it. Can’t wait to see the other 100th birthday concepts, too.

UK to Test Self-Driving Trucks Later This Year

As reported by Engadget: Later this year, the UK will open up its motorways to self-driving trucks under new plans to speed up deliveries and cut traffic congestion. The Times reports that Chancellor George Osborne will confirm funding for the project, which could see convoys of up to 10 autonomous trucks -- or lorries as Brits call them -- driving a few meters apart, during this month's budget announcement, helping Britain position itself as one of the leading proponents of self-driving vehicles.

According to reports, a stretch of the M6 motorway near Carlisle has been touted as a possible testing ground. On this quieter part of the UK's major road network, a driver can lead a "platoon" of autonomous trucks without having to navigate various entry and exit points.

Although it's not known which vehicles will be tested on British roads, Daimler's autonomous truck is likely to be a frontrunner. The company has already driven an augmented Mercedes-Benz Actros down Germany's Autobahn 8 and also received the green light to test them on US roads.

The UK government is already putting the finishing touches to stretches of smart roads. Jaguar Land Rover, Huawei and Vodafone have joined various UK universities to test a number of self-driving car technologies, including LTE, Wi-Fi, LTE-V and DSRC. Another project in West Yorkshire uses infrared cameras to monitor traffic levels and introduce variable speed limits to help keep vehicles moving.

The Department of Transport believes the new test "has the potential to bring major improvements to journeys and the UK" and save fuel in the process. We'll learn more when George Osborne brings his red briefcase to the House of Commons on March 16th.

SpaceX Launches Satellite, but Doesn't Stick the Landing on the Drone Ship

Today at 6:35 p.m. EST, SpaceX hoped, at last, to make its fifth attempt to launch and then land, its Falcon 9 rocket on an at-sea platform. The launch attempt has been delayed for a multitude of reasons over the last nine days, including bad weather, heavy winds, and even a boat roaming into a safety zone.

However, it was not to be:

Launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, the rocket is set to deliver a commercial satellite into orbit. Shortly after liftoff, the first stage of the rocket was to automatically attempt a landing on a so-called "drone ship" at sea, which SpaceX has named "Of Course I Still Love You."

The company’s four previous attempts to land the Falcon 9 at sea have ended without success, some in spectacular explosions, some in oh-so-close misses, and one in which the rocket blew up while still ascending. In February, the first stage made it back to the drone ship, but exploded when it fell onto the deck of the drone ship after one of its legs broke on impact.

In December, SpaceX did successfully return the the Falcon 9 first stage to Earthfor the first time. But the company's ultimate plans are to be able to land it both on land and at sea, giving it maximum flexibility in the future.

About 10 minutes after launch, the first stage will attempt to return upright on the deck of "Of Course I Still Love You," a 100-foot-by-300-foot, unmanned floating platform currently off the coast of Florida. The rocket is meant to guide itself to the barge using GPS.

Those hoping for a successful landing, however, should temper their expectations. SpaceX said in a mission description (PDF) published ahead of time that because of the launch’s specific profile, "a successful landing is not expected."

When Elon Musk’s company eventually does complete an at-sea landing of the first stage, it will secure a key element of a future of affordable launches.

"SpaceX believes a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access," the company says on itswebsite. "The majority of the launch cost comes from building the rocket, which flies only once. Compare that to a commercial airliner—each new plane costs about the same as Falcon 9, but can fly multiple times per day, and conduct tens of thousands of flights over its lifetime. Following the commercial model, a rapidly reusable space launch vehicle could reduce the cost of traveling to space by a hundredfold."

Today's mission, of course, also has a scientific purpose beyond returning the rocket home. The launch is meant to deliver the SES-9 commercial communications satellite for SES, a global satellite company, to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). SES clients, who receive satellite-based communications from the company, include Internet service providers, broadcasters, business and governmental organizations, and mobile and fixed network operators. The company has a fleet of more than 50 geostationary satellites.

"SES-9 is the largest satellite dedicated to serving the Asia-Pacific region for SES," SpaceX wrote in the mission description. "With its payload of 81 high-powered Ku-band transponder equivalents, SES-9 will be the 7th SES satellite providing unparalleled coverage to over 20 countries in the region."

The new satellite will be co-located with SES-7.

The satelite launch itself has been successful, but will take some additional time before it reaches full orbit.

Google’s PlaNet AI Can Figure Out Where a Picture Was Taken Just by Looking at it

As reported by Android Authority: Google’s deep-learning experiments have produced a wide array of results both practical and fascinating. The newest AI endeavor can look at a picture and guess where it was taken by comparing it to millions of other pictures at once. It’s called PlaNet, and it’s heralding an era in which photos won’t need geotags for their photographer’s location to be pinpointed.

The premise is fairly simple and easy to grasp. If you put a picture of the Statue of Liberty in front of someone, billions of people would be able to guess correctly that the photo was taken in New York City. We identify locations based on landmarks all the time, and this program does essentially the same thing. However, it’s able to identify locations in the absence of obvious landmarks by comparing and contrasting the photo with a massive database of pictures taken all around the world.The technology is by no means perfect. Or even consistent. Team lead Tobias Weyland says that PlaNet can can pinpoint a photo’s location with street-level accuracy 3.6 percent of the time. Just guessing the city hops it up to 10.1 percent accuracy, and it gets the country right 28.4 percent of the time. It can guess the continent almost half the time, 48 percent accuracy on that one.

That may sound pathetic, but the point isn’t that it’s perfect. The point is that it’s better at doing this than human beings. To see how well you fair at guessing your location, give Geoguessr a whirl. This little online game will drop you in a random location and let you stroll around and try to figure out where you are. It’s pretty tough, and PlaNet isn’t given the luxury of a stroll when trying to suss out these photos’ locations.

To showcase this tech’s ability, researchers pitted the program against a group of well-traveled human beings. PlaNet was able to out-guess human players in 56 percent of guessing rounds. Although that seems like a narrow victory, researchers pointed out that PlaNet had a “localization error rate” less than half that of its human competitors.

Google hasn’t revealed how they’re planning on using this tech or how its development will be pushed forward, but it does have some interesting implications.