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Google has announced it will live stream a potentially landmark competition between its DeepMind AI and Go world champion Lee Sedol in South Korea in March.

DeepMind, a British-based artificial intelligence startup bought by Google in 2014, made global headlines late last month after it announced it had successfully beaten one of the world's top players at the ancient Chinese game.


Go, which has simple rules but an impossibly vast number of positions and outcomes, has long been considered a watershed test for 'neural network' AI and their ability to flexibly out-think humans.

More than just Google are working on computers that can out-think humans -- Facebook announced its own, more limited progress on the same day as Google in January. But DeepMind's progress has been phenomenal, described as up to a decade earlier than expected.

Each match in the five-game test will take place on a single day, from March 9 to 15, DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said on Twitter. The fact that its AlphaGo AI has already beaten European champion Fan Hui 5-0 will give it confidence heading into the $1million series, but it's not a sure thing. Sedol is regarded as a much better player, and he is confident he can come out victorious: "I have heard that Google DeepMind’s AI is surprisingly strong and getting stronger, but I am confident that I can win at least this time," he said in a statement, according to VentureBeat.

Google's live-streamed battle against Sedol obviously recalls the famous matches between chess champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue computer in 1996 and 1997; Kasparov won the first match but lost the second, a moment regarded as titanic in the development of computer power but incomparably simpler as a task. Chess, with its specific moves and situational play, is easier for a computer -- a brute-force comparison to previous matches and an encyclopaedic knowledge of different scenarios gives a huge advantage, unlike in Go which requires abstract, strategic thought, and an anticipation of an opponent's moves.

What is clear is that Google and DeepMind are only getting started: AlphaGo, even if it wins, will be followed by successive AIs that improve on the formula. What remains to be seen is whether the result is a net-benefit to humanity, or a fundamental economic disaster. And from which perspective you see that, probably determines who you'll be supporting in March.