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]
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Filed Under: ai, algorithms, alphago, arimaa, artificial intelligence, chess, fan hui, feng-hsiung hsu, game algorithms, games, go, lee sedol
Companies: deepmind, google
Comments on “DailyDirt: AlphaGo Plays Better Go Than Puny Humans…”
AlphaGo for president!
I’d trust a computer program over some of the candidates…..
Re: AlphaGo for president!
You mean, you’d trust a computer programmer or team thereof.
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.
For those who can't read Wired on account of adblockers...
Rocketnews is willing to release the article without making demands regarding your adblocker.
So what did AlphaGo do with its money? Is he hitting on some hot Alphaettes?
Re: Prize Money.
It’s traditional when we build computers that enter into typically human-contestant contests and then win prize money that the money goes to charities. Some news sources mention UNICEF and Go-related non-profits.
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).
Doesn't actually play better
Seriously, comparing a machine that cost billions of dollars, takes a team of hundreds (if not thousands) of engineers to construct and program, and took decades as well as HUNDREDS of billions to develop to a single human in their 30s to 50s who has in all probability made less than one million in their life is intellectually dishonest at best. So it’s not surprising that media hypes this.
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.