When: 4 p.m. Monday, March 14

Where: 1-140 Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS), University of Alberta

In a January 27 publication in the Journal Nature, a team of researchers at Google Deepmind, led by two University of Alberta alumni, announced their program AlphaGo, which plays the ancient Asian game of Go at a professional level. Now, AlphaGo is challenging a top human player, the legendary Lee Sedol, in a five-game match.

This talk, which will be given the day after the first game of the match, outlines the main ideas that have led to this breakthrough result and how it builds on earlier basic research, much of which was accomplished by researchers from the University of Alberta’s Department of Computing Science.

The talk will include a discussion of some of the wider implications of the work behind AlphaGo, and will be accessible to a general audience. It will be followed by an update in about a week, after the end of the match.

No registration required.