This Week’s Tech Highlights: AlphaGo’s Farewell, AI Advances & Git Security

AlphaGo Team Announces "AlphaGo" Retirement and Releases 50 Self‑Play Games

On May 27, the upgraded AlphaGo dominated the Wuzhen human‑machine Go competition, winning 3‑0 in what will be the final three matches. DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis said this was AlphaGo’s last competitive appearance and announced that 50 self‑play game records will be made available to humanity.

Tencent Becomes Asia’s Most Active Corporate Investor in Tech Start‑ups

Since the first quarter of 2016, Tencent has invested in more than 30 VC‑backed Asian start‑ups and now holds stakes in 15 Chinese unicorns. Asia hosts 62 unicorns valued at $283.5 billion; China has 46, with 21 backed by the four major internet firms—Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com, and Tencent.

Microsoft Migrates the Entire Windows Codebase to Git

Microsoft has moved its Windows source code from Source Depot to GVFS (Git Virtual File System). The shift, planned years ago, aims to modernize the engineering system across many domains such as version control, build, release, testing, telemetry, static analysis, and security, starting with work planning, code control, and build processes.

WeChat Mini‑Program Capabilities Expanded with Unlimited QR Codes, Enhanced Templates, and New Data Analytics

On May 27, WeChat upgraded mini‑programs in three major ways: unlimited generation of mini‑program QR codes, template message upgrades allowing up to three messages within seven days after a payment, and richer data analysis features including user portrait data (gender, age, region, device distribution).

Alibaba Partners with Lianhua Supermarkets to Advance New‑Retail Smart Stores

Alibaba Group acquired an 18% stake in Lianhua Supermarkets from Yiguo Fresh, becoming the second‑largest shareholder. The investment underscores Alibaba’s commitment to new‑retail with big‑data‑driven smart stores, aiming to integrate online and offline commerce, payments, logistics, and membership ecosystems.

"Siri Father" Says AI Should Have Personality and Emotions

Norman Winarsky, early investor and manager of Siri, argues that AI should possess a personality, which was deliberately built into Siri. He highlights emotional connections users, especially children and autistic individuals, form with AI assistants and envisions future AI that can inspire humans and even simulate love.

Facebook Unveils a Faster, More Accurate Neural‑Network Machine Translation System

Facebook’s AI research team released a new neural‑network machine translation (NMT) model that outperforms all existing systems and runs nine times faster than Google’s NMT. The approach uses convolutional neural networks to process sentences in a structured order, capturing complex relationships between sentence components.

Xamarin Live Player Accelerates Mobile App Development

At Microsoft Build 2017, Terry Myerson introduced Xamarin Live Player (XLP), a tool that lets developers write iOS or Android apps without first downloading the full SDKs. With Visual Studio integration, developers can deploy code directly to devices for real‑time development and debugging, enabling rapid prototyping before moving to a full development cycle.

Git 2.13 Enhances Security and Improves User Interface

Git version 2.13 brings UI improvements and patches two critical vulnerabilities. It adds detection of malicious objects to mitigate SHA‑1 collision attacks and fixes a remote code‑execution flaw in git‑shell, enforcing stricter SSH usage and custom command handling.

Siri Co‑Founder Calls Data the Most Valuable Asset for AI and the World

Norman Winarsky, co‑founder of Siri, told the MTA Tianmo Music Festival Tech Forum on May 20 that AI will disrupt every market, making devices smaller and smarter. He emphasized that while algorithms matter, massive data is the true asset that trains and powers AI systems.