Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players • Hacker News Board

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#521

Post by tripzilch » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

allovernow wrote: post #483

Iv wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you are other readers are interested, what you describe is an old philosophical debate spanning mostly morals but as you point out, also the pursuit of happiness and other areas. It is the opposition between consequentialism (=what is important is the result of your actions) versus deontologism (=what is important is what you are doing, not the result). I think that as machines become smarter and smarter, it…

>I think that as machines become smarter and smarter, it is good that we dive a bit more in our philosophical world and reach for what makes us human. That's a recurring theme in Ghost in the Shell, at least the anime series. That as the line between human and machine is blurred, the general trend is in the direction of homogeneity, but here and there you still see people doing "deontological" things, ostensibly as a…

On the other hand, insects are also kind of like NN powered robots, and they don't (necessarily?) have individuality. Especially not ones that form colonies, like ants or bees.

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#522

Post by dfan » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

breatheoften wrote: post #470

dfan wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. The top humans are much better at Go than they were four years ago, largely due to learning from the new engines. If it were all just about sampling the phase space zillions of times, this would not be the case.

This is interesting to me ... how exactly is this assessed ...? Do people keep around versions of “alpha go year 2017” and play against it in order to measure human improvement over time? If the basis for observing improvement has become “I can beat old versions of the ai more reliably than I used to be able to” or if I have learned to beat players who have not studied alpha zero I suppose that’s a form of usefully l…

I admit that I do not have a quantitative measure to support my claim (as you note, constructing one is difficult). But qualitatively:

1) People have learned a lot from new engines: joseki (corner patterns), general strategy (e.g., moves on the side are now considered less valuable, making large moyos (largely empty space loosely surrounded by your stones) is less attractive because AIs have demonstrated that they're more invadable than previously thought) and are able to actually explain the new principles in human terms.

2) All go professionals now play in the new style, to some degree; ones who tried to continue in the old pre-AI style performed badly.

So I am comfortable claiming that human play has improved by learning from the new engines.

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#523

Post by tripzilch » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 3:44 PM UTC

mr_toad wrote: post #467

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But the defeat of the tactics born from this mindset by MCTS at least for now lay bare the fact that the path to being good at go is actually to probabilistically sample the phase space of the game and perform impossibly mindless statistics on the game outcome an enormous number of times ... This is a rationalist opinion that is attractive because it appears unbiased, unwilling to make any concessions to human nat…

> In particular, human players do none of the extremely tedious, extremely computationally intensive maths that computer players have to do. This sounds like a Chinese room argument. Performing computationally expensive maths doesn’t make the computer intelligent. But that says nothing about the intelligence of the maths itself.

I see how it seems like a Chinese Room argument, but I saw it more as a statement about how much more there is to figure out about how the human mind does things, that we need to build such particularly powerful machines to defeat it.

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#524

Post by biolurker1 » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #481

braythwayt wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It used to be that you might be able to believe that there is some kind of art behind go, some sort of abstract beauty to it, and that the pursuit of this beauty is the path to being good at go ... All but the last phrase are still true. Pursuit of Go for beauty is still pursuit of Go for beauty. I will never play any instrument as well as a sequencer. I believe algorithms will make beautiful Jazz improvisations in…

In case you are other readers are interested, what you describe is an old philosophical debate spanning mostly morals but as you point out, also the pursuit of happiness and other areas. It is the opposition between consequentialism (=what is important is the result of your actions) versus deontologism (=what is important is what you are doing, not the result). I think that as machines become smarter and smarter, it…

> There is not rational reason to like survival. To love our children, to do what we call good.

Of course there is and very well described in evolutionary science

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#525

Post by Xc43 » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #291

Xc43 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spiders interact with each other. Are they part of a hive?

Other than mating (and then killing their mates), how do spiders interact?

My point is they do not interact in a way we would qualify as hive. Neither do we.

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#526

Post by klyrs » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

jv22222 wrote: post #425

breatheoften wrote: post #374

I sympathize. It used to be that you might be able to believe that there is some kind of art behind go, some sort of abstract beauty to it, and that the pursuit of this beauty is the path to being good at go ... But the defeat of the tactics born from this mindset by MCTS at least for now lay bare the fact that the path to being good at go is actually to probabilistically sample the phase space of the game and perfor…

I’m now curios, can a human design a game that a computer can not beat a human at.

I'd love to see a blinded Dixit competition between humans and AI, judged by humans. Of course, humans and AI could get an advantage by playing lots of Dixit. But if the cards are generated specifically for that competition, things could get quite interesting.

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#527

Post by braythwayt » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

jackcviers3 wrote: post #516

braythwayt wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It used to be that you might be able to believe that there is some kind of art behind go, some sort of abstract beauty to it, and that the pursuit of this beauty is the path to being good at go ... All but the last phrase are still true. Pursuit of Go for beauty is still pursuit of Go for beauty. I will never play any instrument as well as a sequencer. I believe algorithms will make beautiful Jazz improvisations in…

Imagine a world where no human contribution matters because a different species already thought of it. No improvisation on any instrument can be novel because a machine already played it exactly like you would have. A world where your children look to a philosopher machine for guidance, because it is wiser, kinder, and deeper than you could ever be. Human existence will still occur, however, our species's defining ch…

> Imagine a world where no human contribution matters because a different species already thought of it

You are begging the question in in the original sense of the phrase "begging the question."

You start by stating your conclusion as an axiom! You state that "no human contribution matters because a different species already thought of it" as if that is necessarily true.

It isn't.

We choose what matters. I play Bach, badly. Bach already thought of that music, and many thousands, possibly millions of people have played the particular pieces I have worked on (The first suite for unaccompanied cello in Gmaj, the Prelude to the first Fuge in Cmaj from Book One of WTC).

Does my playing not matter?

I say it does. Furthermore, Bach's music can be encoded as a number. All numbers already exist. Bach did not create that number any more than I created the number that encodes this comment.

Does my comment not matter?

You find this general idea depressing, and so do many other people.

But it isn't "depressing" in an absolute sense. That's just a word we made up to describe a feeling many of us happen to have.

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#528

Post by Xc43 » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

gdy wrote: post #508

Xc43 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a bee. I have no queen. I am not part of a hive, I am a social individual. This hive mind over-simplification is ridiculous and to me: disgusting. As if we were one

You have a queen and it makes you pay taxes and obey laws

Being forced to pay taxes and obey laws is not having a hive mind. Nor does the government equals a being that I serve.

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#529

Post by Xc43 » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

munmaek wrote: post #324

Xc43 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever seen a real hive bro? I see you consider yourself as part of one, but do you even realize the implications or just mindlessly accept it? I am not and will never a bee. This analogy is demonstration of laziness.

Everyone is a bee to an extent, unless they live as a hermit. We’re all part of a larger system and have certain things to do (work, pay taxes, and so on). With the advent of the internet, behavior will continue to grow more hive-like due to basically instantaneous communication. Is that so bad?

To an extent. Certainly not to the extent that it is a worthy comparison. Conformity is not bad in itself. What is bad is the comparison to a mindless drone. I would go more for something like tribe mind instead of hive mind.

Re: Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

#530

Post by csa » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

alanfalcon wrote: post #480

csa wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m glad I’m not the only one. I was totally floored, and I struggled to explain the significance to non-go players. My respect for AI increased drastically that day, and (honestly) I developed a small amount of fear due to how AlphaGo’s style of play was not understood particularly well (e.g., some of the moves would absolutely be called “slack” if played by a human).

You both speak of the day AlphaGo won 4/5 matches, yet the matches were played over a series of days. Which of those days was the switch flipped, then? For me there was a significance in day three, but it was mitigated somewhat by the (to me) surprise of day/match four.

IIRC, it was day 3 for me as well, and I had the same (minor) let down on day 4 (resign?!?!). That said, I imagined the resignation was a fixable flaw in the AI, and this turned out to be correct.

I can’t actually remember where I first learned about the match. It may have been HN, it may have been in an AGA e-mail, or it may have been some tech-oriented magazine/web site in English or Japanese. I am certain it wasn’t match 1, because I reviewed earlier matches, and I remember the let down of match 4, so must have been match 2 or 3.