Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo is one step closer to omnipotence in the ancient game of Go on Tuesday after it prevailed in the first of three matches against Ke Jie, a 19-year-old Chinese prodigy who is the world's No 1 human player.

The victory shows the big leaps AI has made in the 3,000-year-old board game, which at one time was thought to be beyond the reach of computer algorithms because of its complexity, experts said.

"AlphaGo is completely different from what it was one year ago. In the past, it had shortcomings. But now it is progressing so fast that I have not found any of its weaknesses yet," Ke said at a news conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, after losing a close game by half a point.