A machine has won the first of five matches against a champion player at the ancient board game Go.

AlphaGo, a supercomputer developed by Google, scored a surprising win against South Korean Go grandmaster Lee Se-Dol in a match held at the Four Seasons hotel in Seoul recently.

Lee, one of the greatest players of the ancient board game in present times, has been the game's world champion for the past 10 years, according to Chinese state media. As such, the London-made supercomputer AlphaGo's win over the player was unexpected.

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In October last year, the Artificial Intelligence computer defeated European Go champion Fan Hui, with a score of 5-0. It was not thought, however, that it would do the same with the Korean champion.

AlphaGo's creators, on the other hand, were confident of their creation, saying that it is able to improve itself by using algorithms that capture data from matches played. As such, they believe that it is now better than when it defeated Fan.

Going uphill

AlphaGo's developers said that the Go boardgame is what they consider to be their 'Mount Everest,' something that challenges them with its completely different complexity and mechanics compared to chess.

Artificial Intelligence milestone

In 1997, a famous victory was recorded by a machine against human intelligence. IBM-developed supercomputer Deep Blue won against grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the game of chess.

The current contest between Lee and AlphaGo serves as major indicator of what scientists and developers have achieved in the field of Artificial Intelligence since then. Four matches are still set to happen in the following days, and whoever wins is promised $1 million.

Champion's reactions

Fan, who was defeated by AlphaGo last year, said “I never imagined I could lose [at the time]."

Lee, AlphaGo's current rival, also admitted to having some nervousness.

"Now I think I may not beat AlphaGo by such a large margin like 5-0,” he said. “It's only right that I'm a little nervous."

TagsGo, AlphaGo, Google, Lee Se-dol, Igo