Why it's a big deal that Google beat a human at Go

Google just made one giant leap to outsmarting mankind. I'm Bridget Carey, this is your cnet update. [MUSIC] Google's artificial intelligence division Deep Mind created a computer that achieved what no one thought a computer could do. Beat a human at the most complicated board game The ancient Chinese game of Go. This is such an impressive breakthrough because Go is unlike any other game for a computer to process. Computers began to beat humans at games back in 1952 with tic-tac-toe. Then it mastered checkers in 94 and in 97 IBM's deep blue Won at chess against champion Gary Kasparov. And in all those situations, the computer is using brute force method of computing, it's looking at every single possible move to calculate the best play. But a computer cannot do that with Go. This 2,500 year old game of black and white stones has too many options to consider all the possible moves. the goal is to surround more territory on the board than your opponent. But there are more possible positions than there are atoms in the universe. That's ten to the power of 170. So the artificial intelligence must find a balance between recognizing the important move But also just plain smart, without knowing all the outcomes. It's sort of like our intuition. Google's system called Alpha Go, took on the current European gold champion San Huai, and won five times in a row. Huai said that Google's machine did make some mistakes it gave him confidence there, but in the end he couldn't beat the machine. Next up Google's [INAUDIBLE] will travel to South Korea to battle the top Go player in the world. World, but it's not all about games. This AI processing power could be applied to real world problems, like helping humans tackle questions in medicine. Experts don't think computers can do this for another ten years. So every other tech story we have today just won't be as cool in comparison, but we can get thru this without being mean to the other stories, right? All right, so PayPal's venmo can now be used to pay for things in other apps. That means the same app you use to pay back your friends can now pay for online purchases. Not quite. It only works with two apps. Game time and Munchery. I don't know what the heck a munchery is and I don't know if I want to know. And there is some Apple news, the company is recalling some models of it's AC wall adapter sold with Mac's and iOS devices. Because of a shock risk. It's not for plugs sold in the United States or the UK, this is for outlets in Europe, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and Brazil. That's not the only recall. Microsoft is recalling some Surface Pro power cables for over heating problems. Yeah, Google does win all news today. That's it for your tech news update. You can dive in to more at cnet.com. From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey. [MUSIC]