computer defeats 8P go professional
A historic sign of the times occurred this afternoon when computer go program MoGo defeated Korean go professional Myungwan Kim 8P at the 2008 U.S. Go Congress in Portland OR. The computer played with a 9-stone handicap and won by 1.5 stones.
MoGo was written by French programmer Sylvain Gelly and ran on a borrowed European supercomputer with 800 CPUs. MoGo is available for download at Gelly’s home page.
With the current pace of technology I now expect to see computers defeating human professionals playing even games in my lifetime…a vision both exciting and depressing.
I just installed MoGo on my laptop and played it a quick game, and I’m impressed, it played some moves so good it was spooky…but MoGo’s yose sucks. OTOH I made MoGo play white…if I gave it 9 stones and more thinking time it would probably give this 8k a run for his money. I’ll try it, but not tonight.