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AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

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Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to watch commentary on the DeepMind channel for game #1 and found it to be very un-informative: I recommend the AGA channel (although it's been linked a few times): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZugVil2v4w , still waiting on the game 2 static video.

I disagree. Last night I found that on the DeepMind channel they were explaining the game a lot for beginners. This was a bit tedious for me but then this is a historic event so there'll be noobs tuning in so I can understand that, and I appreciate that the TV people are thinking of them. Also, the AGA channel you just seem to have a split screen showing two people with headphones on talking over Skype? (Granted, one…

I was wondering why they didn't keep a running total of the score after each move, and show it somewhere on the screen. Isn't that pretty easy to automate?

Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#442
post #419
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! And it doesn't matter in the end... Remember that AlphaGo has spent months developing its own style and theory of the game in a way that no human has ever seen. Its style is sure to have weaknesses, but humans will have a hard time figuring them out on first sight. Similarly chess computers do better in some positions than others (they love open tactics!) and one of the games that Kasparov won against Dee…

But when the weaknesses it has require looking 20 ply into the game, can anyone exploit those weaknesses? And furthermore, if the computer itself is able to see 20 ply into the game, then it can spot its own weaknesses and you need to look even further, making the question of whether it's really a weakness. Weaknesses are only relative to capabilities of the opponent to exploit them. If a tank has a weak spot that ro…

I wonder if AlphaGo has some specialized knowledge to handle ladders, where stones can have an effect at a distance that might only come into play after 20 moves.

Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#443
AI enthusiast and amateur player here: Michael Redmond made a great point yesterday, if the algorithm is only interested in maximizing probability of win and ignoring margin of victory, shouldn't there be some override for weak moves played when the lead is sufficient? AlphaGo played some weak moves when it perceived it was sufficiently ahead yesterday in the end game. A truly intelligent opponent will play strong moves even when sufficiently ahead, no?

Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#444
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

There was one move that literally caused the 9th dan commentator to do a triple-take. It apparently turned out to be super effective.

Not only did the commentator do a triple-take, but the next white move took Sedol about 15 minutes.

One interesting thing that happened during the time for Sedol's next move was that the 9th dan commentator started referring to AlphaGo as "he".

Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#446
post #156

Someone somewhere asked why a lot of people in the Go community is taking this in a somewhat hard way, here is my hypothesis: Go, unlike Chess, has deep mytho attached to it. Throughout the history of many Asian countries it's seen as the ultimate abstract strategy game that deeply relies on players' intuition, personality, worldview. The best players are not described as "smart", they are described as "wise". I thin…

On a more realistic side note... Professional Go players devote decades in training ever since their youth, giving up normal educations and lots of other more lucrative opportunities for their lives. It's very easy to imagine their frustrations now that their life-time devotion actually means nothing in front of the AI. It's an upright denial to the way of life they so chose and devoted. IMHO Google should donate the…

Why is it a denial of anything? Machines can go faster than we can and we still have the 100m dash.

Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#447
post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this happen with "modern tennis" versus how I was taught to play.

This is interesting. Could you (or someone else whose had this experience) elaborate?

Serve-and-volley is pretty much non-existent in modern professional singles tennis. We were always taught to attack the net, and every action was basically laying the groundwork to move forwards and attack.

Nowadays, top players slug it out baseline-to-baseline.

In terms of stance, we were taught to hit from a rotated position where your shoulder faces the net, and a normal vector from your chest points to either the left or right side of the court.

Nowadays, it's much more common to hit from an "open" position, where your body is facing the net, not turned. This would have been considered "unprepared" or poor footwork in my day, but it actually allows for greater reach. It does make it more difficult to hit a hard shot, but that's made up for by racquet technology and generally stronger players.

Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#448
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AlphaGo is essentially built on the work that IBM did on TD-Gammon (a reinforcement learning backgammon player) in the 90s. Pretty much the same thing happened with TD-Gammon with it playing unconventional moves, in the longer term humans ended up adopting some of TD-Gammon's tactics once they understood how they played out, it wouldn't be surprising to see the same happen with Go.

From my understanding, computers have also had this affect on chess. The play styles of younger champions has evolved to the point where unpredictability is actually part of the strategy. I'm not a chess expert by any means, but this quote by Viswanathan Anand (former World Chess Champion) describes it. “Top competitors who once relied on particular styles of play are now forced to mix up their strategies, for fear t…

>powerful analysis engines will be used to reveal fatal weaknesses in favoured openings...

Anand isn't really talking about strategy here, he's just talking about choice of opening. Players with narrow opening repertoires, like Fischer, have always been easier to prepare for than players who play a wide variety of openings.

As far as actual changes to strategy, the most obvious one is that computers tend to value material more highly than humans. So a computer will take a risky pawn if it looks sound, while a human will see that taking the pawn is very complicated and prefer a simpler move.

Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#449
post #239

As someone who studied AI in college and am a reasonably good amateur player, I have been following the matches between Lee and AlphaGo. AlphaGo plays some unusual moves that go clearly against any classically trained Go players. Moves that simply don't quite fit into the current theories of Go playing, and the world's top players are struggling to explain what's the purpose/strategy behind them. I've been giving it…

Your metaphor about army units has got me thinking: When are we going to see the next generation of AlphaGo, but applied to a real world army?

Re: AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol again in match 2 of 5

#450
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AlphaGo is essentially built on the work that IBM did on TD-Gammon (a reinforcement learning backgammon player) in the 90s. Pretty much the same thing happened with TD-Gammon with it playing unconventional moves, in the longer term humans ended up adopting some of TD-Gammon's tactics once they understood how they played out, it wouldn't be surprising to see the same happen with Go.

From my understanding, computers have also had this affect on chess. The play styles of younger champions has evolved to the point where unpredictability is actually part of the strategy. I'm not a chess expert by any means, but this quote by Viswanathan Anand (former World Chess Champion) describes it. “Top competitors who once relied on particular styles of play are now forced to mix up their strategies, for fear t…

Computers and the internet have changed chess in several ways:

(1) Online game databases have made it easier for players to track developments in opening theory and prepare to play specific opponents

(2) Chess engines add to this be used to search for antidotes to complicated opening systems

(3) Young players have greater access to high-quality sparring partners - either engines or fellow humans on online servers.

This has lead to the best players becoming younger, and players playing more varied and less 'sharp' openings.

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