Recently, an artificial intelligence program developed by Google defeated several champions of the Asian board game go. The program's achievement made headlines all over the world since go is considered a very complex game. The programmers, in fact, thought it would take much longer for their creation to beat a human.
On May 15, NHK will air a special, "Tenshi ka, Akuma ka" ("Angel or Devil?"; NHK-G, 9 p.m.) that follows shōgi (Japanese chess) champion Yoshihara Habu to several locations to find out more about work on artificial intelligence. Shogi, incidentally, may be even more complex than go.
Habu travels to Britain to talk to the people who developed the Google program; to the U.S. to visit a venture business that invented a program to diagnose cancer based on images; and to a Japanese company that is trying to figure how to imbue AI with emotions.