Xiaomi CEO: Win or lose, Go match a 'landmark event'

The world's top Go player Lee Sedol puts the first stone against Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match in Seoul, South Korea, in this handout picture provided by Google and released by Yonhap on March 9, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi Corp, is taking a keen interest in the matchup between Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo as it squares up against world champion Lee Sedol in the ancient Chinese board game Go.

Artificial intelligence is quickly developing, and computers will beat the best human players in a Go match "sooner or later", Lei said Thursday.

It may be sooner rather than later.

AlphaGo won its second game on Thursday against Lee, 33 of South Korea. The five-game match is set to run through next Tuesday at a hotel in central Seoul, unless AlphaGo upsets Lee once more.

Lei told China Daily on Thursday that Xiaomi has established an R&D team working on artificial intelligence, or AI, as it's very important supporting technology for robotics.

"Virtual reality and robotics are two directions for Xiaomi to explore in the future. We have invested in four companies related to robotics and we are setting up our own project to develop robots,” Lei said, adding that the companies are developing both service and industrial robots.

Lei said that he learned to play Go as a child, and as a deputy to the National People's Congress, he was keeping track of the match despite a busy schedule of meetings during the two sessions in Beijing.

He posted a comment on his Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging service in China, about the game, writing, "Whether the computer wins or loses, its match against a top human Go player is another landmark event!”

"The Go game may be the most difficult project for AI because there are so many possible changes and to win the game, players must consider the overall situation rather than fix their eyes on several parts,” Lei said.

"That's why AI stayed equal to amateur human Go players in the past 20 or 30 years, with such a big gap that people didn't think computers can leap over and beat mankind in a Go game.”

But the tech-savvy entrepreneur is confident that AI development will surpass people's expectations.

"A computer is good at calculation and a properly designed AI model can give a computer 'instincts' to avoid unnecessary calculations and respond to changes quickly,” Lei said. "A computer is good at numeracy, which is vital to winning a Go game.”

Deep learning is a hot issue in AI in recent years and researchers have made some breakthroughs, Lei said.

For example, "Xiaomi's R&D team on artificial intelligence has invented the function of face recognition on the Xiaomi phone and the function's accuracy has been increased significantly in the past few years”, Lei said.

Face recognition puts all the photos of the same face under a single directory, which is very helpful as Xiaomi phone users sort through thousands of pictures.

Many Chinese people have been watching the Go game live online, amazed by the computer program's performance and the world-leading high-tech achievements made by western scientists, including those in the United States.

"China is still about 10 years behind the US in the high-tech research and development in basic sciences,” Lei said. "We are filling the gap starting from micro-innovation and we need to be patient. China is also in an encouraging climate for innovation.”

When asked why Xiaomi has invested in companies developing industrial robots, Lei said, "Xiaomi is actually real economy, or is highly dependent on real economy.”

"Xiaomi has been advocating what we called 'new made-in-China products' for the past five years, which requires craftsmanship and perfection in manufacturing,” he said.

Lei revealed that Xiaomi has sent many engineers to suppliers' factories and he has been advocating automation in the factories for the past two years.

"I have been paying attention to industrial automation for a long time. I think automation equipment is important to both increasing productivity and securing quality,” he said.

Whether AlphaGo wins the match against Lee or not, Lei is calling for a rematch. This time, he wants the program to play Chinese master Ke Jie.

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