Google researchers have announced a big step forward for Artificial intelligence (AI) as one of its machines mastered the ancient Chinese game, Go, outclassing the current European champion of the game. The 2,500 year old game as proved a difficult one for computers to beat over the years due to its near infinite number of moves and complex scoring system. Washingtonpost.com reports: But that all changed this week as Google’s researchers brought a fresh approach and wealth of computing power to findings published in the scientific journal Nature. “It’s real milestone and surprise for me how quickly things have happened,” said Martin Muller, a professor at the University of Alberta and long-time researcher of Go. A decade ago, his work helped computers draw closer to the caliber of human players, which Google then used in its approach. The company’s researchers “have these new ideas and they showed they’re very effective.” The Google team hopes that in the long term, the technology behind the breakthrough can be applied to society’s most challenging problems, including making medical diagnoses and modeling climates. Such efforts are years away, the researchers admit. In the near term, they’re looking to integrate the work into smartphones assistants [...]