AlphaGo takes 3-0 lead in historic match with Lee Sedol

The world's top Go player Lee Sedol puts the first stone against Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo during the second day of Google DeepMind Challenge Match in Seoul, South Korea, March 10, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The most famous AI victory to date came in 1997 when the IBM-developed supercomputer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, the then-world class chess champion, in its second attempt.

But a true mastery of Go, which has more possible move configurations than there are atoms in the universe, had long been considered the exclusive province of humans -- until now.

AlphaGo's consecutive victories in the mind game is a breakthrough for AI, showing the program has mastered one of the most creative and complex games ever devised.

AI experts had forecast it would take another decade for computers to beat professional Go players. That changed when AlphaGo defeated the European Go champion Fan Hui last year in a 5-0 whitewash, in a closed-door match later published in the journal Nature. Since then, AlphaGo's performance has steadily improved.

AlphaGo's successive wins over a human champion shows computers can mimic intuition and tackle more complex tasks, its creators say. They believe that ability could be used to help scientists solve tough real-world problems in health care and other areas.