You can chalk it up as another victory for the machines.

In what they called a milestone achievement for artificial intelligence, scientists said last week that they have created a computer program that beat a professional human player at go, a complex board game that originated in ancient China.

The feat recalled IBM supercomputer Deep Blue’s 1997 match victory in chess over world champion Garry Kasparov. But go, a strategy game popular in such places as China, South Korea and Japan, is vastly more complicated than chess.

“Go is considered to be the pinnacle of game AI research,” said artificial intelligence researcher Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, the British company that developed the AlphaGo program. “It’s been the grand challenge, or holy grail if you like, of AI since Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess.”

AlphaGo swept a five-game match against Chinese professional Fan Hui, a three-time European go champion. Until now, the best computer go programs had played only at the level of human amateurs.

In go, two players place black and white pieces on a square grid, aiming to take more territory than their adversary.

“It’s a very beautiful game with extremely simple rules that lead to profound complexity. In fact, go is probably the most complex game ever devised by humans,” said Hassabis, who was a chess prodigy as a child.

Scientists have taken large strides in artificial intelligence in recent years, making computers think and learn more like people do.

Hassabis acknowledged that some people might worry about the increasing capabilities of AI after the go accomplishment, but added, “We’re still talking about a game here.”

While AlphaGo learns in a more humanlike way, it still needs much more practice — millions of games rather than thousands — than a human needs to get good at go, Hassabis said.

The scientists foresee that similar AI programs might be developed to improve smartphone assistants such as Apple’s Siri, to aid in medical diagnostics and eventually to collaborate with human scientists in research.

Hassabis said South Korea’s Lee Sedol, the world’s top go player, has agreed to play AlphaGo in a five-game match in Seoul in March. Lee said in a statement, “I heard Google DeepMind’s AI is surprisingly strong and getting stronger, but I am confident that I can win, at least this time.”

The findings were published in the journal Nature.