Google’s AlphaGo computer is two ahead in its five-game match of wits against the world champion of the ancient Chinese game of Go, leaving the human competitor “speechless” and the designer behind the machine surprised.

谷歌(Google)的AlphaGo电脑再度击败世界围棋冠军，在这种古老的中国棋类游戏的五局“人机对战”中连胜两局。赛后，人类围棋高手坦承“无言以对”，而机器的设计者表示意外。

Lee Se-Dol said he was in shock at losing to a machine after it beat him in the first game on Wednesday. On Thursday, after losing the second contest, he said he could not identify a weakness in AlphaGo, saying: “At no time did I feel that I was leading, and I thought that AlphaGo played a near-perfect game.”

韩国九段棋手李世石(Lee Se-Dol)表示，在周三举行的首场对弈中败在机器手下，使他处于震惊之中。周四，在输掉第二局后，他承认自己看不出AlphaGo的任何弱点，称：“我自始至终不觉得自己占上风，我认为AlphaGo走出了近乎完美的棋局。”

Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind, the London-based unit behind AlphaGo, tweeted his surprise immediately after the victory. “AlphaGo wins match 2, to take a 2-0 lead! Hard for us to believe,” he said. “AlphaGo played some beautiful creative moves in this game. Mega-tense.”

AlphaGo背后的伦敦团队——谷歌旗下DeepMind的首席执行官杰米斯•哈萨比斯(Demis Hassabis)在获胜后立即在Twitter发帖表示意外。“AlphaGo胜2场，以2-0领先！我们很难相信，”他表示。“AlphaGo在这盘棋中走出了几步有创意的走法。紧张至极。”

The match is seen by observers as a big moment in the development of artificial intelligence, underlying the capacity of computers to replicate and improve on the human decisions needed to play complex board games.

此次对弈被观察者视为人工智能发展的一个重要时刻，突显电脑有能力复制和改进人类决策，这种能力是进行复杂的棋类游戏所必需的。

Go is considered one of the most complex board games. It is played on a board made up of a grid of 19 by 19 squares. The game opens with players taking turns to place black and white playing pieces, known as “stones”, on the vacant intersections, known as the “points” of the board.

围棋被认为是最复杂的棋类游戏之一，使用19x19的网格状棋盘。对弈双方分别执白棋和黑棋，轮流在棋盘网格的空白交叉点上放置自己的棋子。

The objective, as the translation of its name implies, is to surround a larger total area of the board than your opponent by the end of the game.

顾名思义，围棋的目标是在比赛结束时比你的对手围住更大面积的棋盘空间。

Google’s development of its AlphaGo computer is the latest attempt by a technology company to use AI to try and outwit humans in games. IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, and the company’s Watson won the US television quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011.

谷歌开发AlphaGo电脑是一家科技公司利用人工智能试图在游戏中智胜人类的最新尝试。1997年IBM的“深蓝”(Deep Blue)击败国际象棋世界冠军加里•卡斯帕罗夫(Garry Kasparov)，2011年，该公司的“沃森”(Watson)赢得美国电视智力竞赛节目《危险边缘》(Jeopardy)。

The contest is being staged in Seoul and has generated huge interest. The first match was livestreamed and watched by 60m viewers in China alone, with an estimated global audience of 100m.

正在首尔举行的此次对弈，受到了极大关注。第一场比赛被实况转播，仅在中国就有6000万人观看，全球观众人数估计达到1亿。

In October, AlphaGo beat Fan Hui, the European Go champion, by five games to zero — a feat experts had predicted would take a decade.

去年10月，AlphaGo在与欧洲围棋冠军樊麾的对弈中以5-0完胜——之前专家们预计10年后机器才会赢。

Mr Lee had expressed his confidence ahead of the match but after losing the first contest, said he “was very surprised because I did not think I would lose the game”.

李世石在赛前信心满满，但在输掉第一场比赛后表示“非常吃惊，因为我没想到我会输掉比赛”。

Go originated more than 2,500 years ago in ancient China, and is one of the oldest board games played today. In imperial China, it was considered one of the four essential arts of a cultured scholar.

围棋发源于2500年前的中国，是流行至今的最古老棋类游戏之一。在中国古代，围棋被认为是文人的琴棋书画四艺之一。

The game is also used in some schools in the UK in mathematics classes where it is said to help pupils understand statistical concepts such as probability.

在英国一些学校，围棋也被用于数学课，据称它能帮助学生理解统计概念，如概率。

Comparing Go with Chess, the British Go Association said both are strategy games but “where chess is a hierarchical game where the object is to catch the king, Go is an imperial game where each player seeks to enclose more territory on the board than his opponent does.”

据英国围棋协会(British Go Association)介绍，围棋和国际象棋都是战略游戏，但“国际象棋是一种讲等级的游戏，其目标是要‘将死’王，而围棋是一种帝王游戏，对弈双方寻求在棋盘上比对手围住更大地盘”。