All systems Go for supercomputer that learns by itself

THOUSANDS of years of human knowledge has been learnt and surpassed by the world’s smartest computer in just 40 days.

The computer, created by Google Deepmind, can learn from scratch – a breakthrough hailed as one of the greatest ever advances in artificial intelligence

Deepmind amazed the world last year when its AI programme Alphago beat world champion Lee Sedol at Go, an ancient Chinese game of strategy and intuition.

Alphago was so effective because it had been programmed with millions of moves of past masters, and could adjust its game-plan accordingly.

But now the same team has created Alphago Zero, which was taught how to play Go, but given no additional instructions. Instead it learnt the best moves by playing millions of games against itself.

In just three days, it had defeated all versions of Alphago, and within 40 days it had independently found game principles that had taken humans thousands of years to discover. It also developed intriguing new strategies and had “gen- uine moments of creativity”.

Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chief executive of Deepmind, said the programme was so powerful because it was “no longer constrained by the limits of human knowledge”.

He believes that if applied to big health problems such as defeating Alzheimer’s it could, in a matter of weeks, come up with cures that would take humans hundreds of years to find. “Ultimately we want to harness algorithmic breakthroughs like this to help solve all sorts of pressing real world problems,” he said.

“If similar techniques can be applied to other structured problems, such as protein folding, reducing energy consumption, or searching for revolutionary new materials, the resulting breakthroughs have the potential to drive forward human understanding and positively impact all of our lives.”

Deepmind has already begun using Alphago Zero to study protein folding and has promised it will soon publish new findings. Misfolded proteins are responsible for devastating diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Technology companies are increasingly moving into health. Last year, Microsoft announced it planned to beat cancer within 10 years after launching several projects to “hack” the body. Calico, a secretive Google arm, is also investigating ways to extend human life and even stop ageing altogether.

Details of the Alphago Zero test were published in the journal Nature.