China Censored Google's AlphaGo Match Against World's Best Go Player (theguardian.com)

DeepMind's board game-playing AI, AlphaGo, may well have won its first game against the Go world number one, Ke Jie, from China -- but most Chinese viewers could not watch the match live. From a report: The Chinese government had issued a censorship notice to broadcasters and online publishers, warning them against livestreaming Tuesday's game, according to China Digital Times, a site that regularly posts such notices in the name of transparency. "Regarding the go match between Ke Jie and AlphaGo, no website, without exception, may carry a livestream," the notice read. "If one has been announced in advance, please immediately withdraw it." The ban did not just cover video footage: outlets were banned from covering the match live in any way, including text commentary, social media, or push notifications. It appears the government was concerned that 19-year-old Ke, who lost the first of three scheduled games by a razor-thin half-point margin, might have suffered a more damaging defeat that would hurt the national pride of a state which holds Go close to its heart.

Comments

Lighten up, Francis.

[geekmux]

"...that would hurt the national pride of a state which holds Go close to its heart."

Perhaps we should remind the country that we're talking about a game here.

Hell, Kasparov lost to Deep Blue 20 years ago. The concept of a world champion being defeated by a computer playing a game ain't exactly new.

Ah, censorship

[Weaselmancer]

Because if you didn't see it, it didn't happen.

In the wake of "free speech" commencement address

[rs1n]

I find it interesting that just a few days ago there was an uproar with respect to the Univ. of Maryland commencement speech by a Chinese student (studying abroad here in the US) on freedom of speech. There was a huge backlash from China. And now this...

Re:China needs to go

[cm5oom]

Go is the Japanese name of the game, the Chinese name is weiqi. So you should say China needs to weiqi.

Re:China needs to go

[MightyMartian]

Indeed. China is one of the oldest contiguous civilizations on the planet, and yet it acts like some sort of second-rate banana republic that just gained independence a few years ago. Does it really matter if a computer can beat a strategy game champion? We all know it's coming, that eventually computers are going to be able to beat the masters of any game.