AlphaGo, a groundbreaking artificial intelligence system, holds the distinction of being the first AI to triumph over a professional human Go player and to defeat a Go world champion.

Developed by a team led by Demis Hassabis at Google's DeepMind, AlphaGo is underpinned by the principle of "deep learning."

The name AlphaGo is a fusion of "Alpha," representing the first letter of the Greek alphabet, signifying "origin" and "first," and "Go," the English translation of the ancient board game.

The core components of the AlphaGo system encompass:

Move Network: This component predicts or samples the next move based on the current game position.

Fast Moves: It shares the same goal as the Move Network but executes approximately 1000 times faster, with a corresponding compromise in move quality.

Estimation Network: Given the current game position, this network estimates whether the white or black player is likely to win.

Monte Carlo Tree Search: This connects the aforementioned three components, forming a cohesive and comprehensive system.

The complete AlphaGo system actually necessitates two additional fundamental versions for executing play choices. One of these is the "Reinforcement Learning (RL) Policy Network," a modified version intensively trained with millions of simulated games.

This serves as a "stronger" move selector, differing from basic training, which only involves mimicking human gameplay. The advanced training involves simulating games to completion, teaching the network which moves are more likely to lead to a victory.

Silver's team combined the outcomes of millions of training games by pitting the stronger move selector against a version from a previous training iteration.

AlphaGo's achievements have been nothing short of Herculean. In March 2016, AlphaGo took on the world Go champion and professional nine-dan player, Lee Sedol, in a man-machine Go battle, ultimately emerging victorious with a 4-1 score.

Later, in late 2016 and early 2017, AlphaGo engaged in 60 consecutive unbeaten games against numerous Go masters from China, Japan, and South Korea. These matches were played on a Chinese chess website, under the alias "Master".

The Go Summit in Wuzhen, China, in May 2017 witnessed AlphaGo's triumph over the world's No. 1-ranked Go champion, Ke Jie, with a total score of 3-0.

AlphaGo's achievements have solidified its status in the Go community as having surpassed the highest echelons of human professional Go players.

On May 27, 2017, following the man-machine battle against Ke Jie, the AlphaGo team announced that AlphaGo would no longer participate in Go tournaments. Subsequently, on October 18, 2017, the DeepMind team introduced AlphaGo's most formidable version, codenamed AlphaGo Zero.

In a more recent development, as reported by the Financial Times, AI research and development has garnered renewed interest.

American Go player Kaelin B. Perrin succeeded in a remarkable feat by defeating the top Go system KataGo, considered to be on par with AlphaGo. This victory serves as a significant achievement for human players against AI opponents.

Perrin's success can be attributed to his thorough examination of the AI's playing system, where he uncovered its weaknesses and applied his own skills to secure a triumphant outcome, highlighting the ongoing synergy between human expertise and AI capabilities in the realm of Go.