It has been less than three months since Google’s AlphaGo artificial intelligence managed to defeat Lee Sedol in an astounding 4-1 victory, and now it looks like the AI will once again be put to the test as it competes against Ke Jie, who is currently ranked as the top Go player in the world.

During AlphaGo’s first match against Lee Sedol, who is widely considered to be one of the best Go players of all time, Ke Jie dismissed the AI’s abilities, saying (via Ars Technica), “I don’t want to compete with AlphaGo because judging from its matches with Lee, AlphaGo is weaker than me. I don’t want AlphaGo to copy my style.”

Some analysts seemed to agree with Ke Jie’s observation of AlphaGo’s first match. While it ultimately won that round, AlphaGo made several mistakes that could have cost it the game, and one analyst estimated that AlphaGo was close to Lee Sedol’s skill level, but possibly slightly weaker.

“Lee Sedol and AlphaGo are almost at the same level,” Myungwan Kim, a top-ranked professional go player, said during a livestream of AlphaGo’s first match. “Even if [AlphaGo] is slightly weaker, it’s not by far.”

However, several of AlphaGo’s later matches against Lee Sedol proved to be more one-sided, and Ke Jie was forced to admit that the AI might be stronger than he first thought.

“AlphaGo was perfect and made no mistake,” Ke Jie said. “If the conditions are the same, it is highly likely that I can lose.”

This outcome could be even more likely than it would have been earlier this year, as AlphaGo continues to improve its skills using its neural network, which is capable of playing millions of games against itself to determine the best possible moves to make in the game.

There is currently no date set for when AlphaGo’s match against Ke Jie will begin, but an International Go Federation executive claimed that the competition will occur sometime before the end of the year.

Photo by bloomsberries