In 2019, Ke Jie, a famous Chinese Go player, took part in the college entrance exam for high-level sports training teams. After more than a month, he received a confirmation letter from the Ministry of Education to recommend him for admission to Tsinghua University.

When asked whether he would study AI, Ke Jie replied, “I don’t quite understand AI, because what we get in touch with is the Go-related AI. My knowledge about AI is superficial.” 

According to his father, Ke applied for the Business Administration of Tsinghua University, but the specific major and the way for schooling remained unknown.

Focusing on the Go since his childhood, Ke Jie came to Beijing to learn it in Nie Weiping Go Academy when he was younger than 10. As a result, he missed the systematic education in school. At the mention of his future study, Ke was a bit worried, “I hope I will not hit the hot ranking because of the failure in an exam. I think the failure is likely to happen. Perhaps I am a bit stupid.”

Ke Jie was born in Lishui City, Zhejiang Province on August 2, 1997. He began to learn the Go at 6 and participated in the first Go competition at 7. In August 2014, Ke Jie ranked first in Gorating, a world-class rating of Go players. As of December 2017, he has ranked first among the world’s human Go players for 40 consecutive months. From May 23 to 27, 2017, he and AlphaGo had a man-machine battle and was defeated in all the three games. The second game was rated as perfect by the machine. Alpha Go is the first artificial intelligence robot to defeat human professional Go players.

As the leader of Chinese Go, Ke’s competition tasks are heavy. He admitted that if there were a conflict between academic study and competition, he would focus on competition.

(Executive Editor: Liu LIU)