Go champ goes virtual to teach class

Ke Jie, a champion Chinese Go player, appeared online to give a virtual class as part of the Tsinghua University cloud class livestream as China continues its nationwide efforts to control the novel coronavirus epidemic, according to Beijing Youth Daily.

Ke, 22 and a multiple world champion, is now a business administration freshman at Tsinghua. The university opened online classes to the public on Monday as educational institutes nationwide have rescheduled the new spring semester due to the epidemic outbreak.

In the video class on Wednesday, Ke showed a self-made PowerPoint presentation featuring basic knowledge of Go, fundamental skills and stories about him and the sport.

In the question and answer section, Ke did not dodge a question about AIphaGo, a DeepMind artificial intelligence Go-playing program defeating the then world's top-ranked Ke for the third consecutive game in 2017. He said the AI technology has inspired him with new ideas about Go and the world.

He did a demonstration of Go chess that formed the Chinese characters for the phrase ''Come on, China''.