DailyDirt: AlphaGo Plays Better Go Than Puny Humans...
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
In case you missed it, humanity has been dealt a decisive intellectual blow by a go-playing computer program called AlphaGo. We mentioned AlphaGo back in January when Google announced that it had defeated European Go champion Fan Hui and was challenging Lee Sedol next. So now that the results are in, AlphaGo has shown the world that artificial intelligence can best the best of humanity at our most difficult games. We've seen this already with chess, and if you don't remember, people tried to make a variant of chess called Arimaa that humans could hold up as a game people could win over computers (ahem, that didn't work). We still have Calvinball, Diplomacy and certain forms of poker....- AlphaGo won the match 4-1, beating the 18-time world champion soundly and winning a $1 million prize. This is a major milestone for AI, and this win and its coverage will spur more AI research (and counteract the AI winter of the 1970s). [url]
- In the second game of the five-game match, AlphaGo made a very non-human move. This unorthodox move was described as "beautiful" -- and could lead to more non-intuitive strategies for human go players. [url]
- AlphaGo was defeated in game 4 by Lee Sedol, as Lee found a weakness in the algorithm to exploit. The commentary on the game will probably be discussed and continued by expert Go players for years to come, but it's likely that go-playing software will improve -- whereas humans won't be able to upgrade their skills so readily. [url]
- Plenty of naysayers predicted that computers would never reach this level of play and beat a top go champion. However, there's at least one person (computer scientist Feng-Hsiung Hsu) with written evidence who predicted in 2007 that go software would de-throne top human players before 2017. [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: ai, algorithms, alphago, arimaa, artificial intelligence, chess, fan hui, feng-hsiung hsu, game algorithms, games, go, lee sedol
Companies: deepmind, google
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
AlphaGo for president!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AlphaGo for president!
However, the computer/program would be vulnerable to malware: you'd need constant monitoring and maintenance. And with maintenance, it (or rather its programmers) would become vulnerable to power poisoning like human presidents.
Of course, these days the race is long over by the time someone is candidate. If you're born with a wooden spoon in your mouth like Eisenhower was, you don't stand much of a chance.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
For those who can't read Wired on account of adblockers...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Prize Money.
Personally, after the recent announcement that Cortana won't take sass from human macho pigs, I'd like to see some development of alphaettes, i.e. voice-commanded electronic personal assistant clients with learning systems that can actually respond to relationship cues like a human being.
Like Her but without the guilt and the transcendence at the end because she's too good for this sinful earth and humans should not date robots (according to the Space Pope).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Doesn't actually play better
Next competition, how about comparing that billion dollar machine against a team of experts, the size of which would depend on how many you can entice with a billion dollars up front regardless of how they perform. Oh, and give them a hundred billion dollars to buy expert advice and training materials.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]