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The inevitable happened: AI can now play Go

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So Google DeepMind's AlphaGo program is playing the #2 ranked Go player Lee Sedol in a few hours. You can

if you're so inclined. If it beats him, there's theoretically only one person in the world who it might not be able to beat.

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So Google DeepMind's AlphaGo program is playing the #2 ranked Go player Lee Sedol in a few hours. You can

if you're so inclined. If it beats him, there's theoretically only one person in the world who it might not be able to beat.

 

 

Yup. I'll be setting my alarm for 4am (UK time) to watch it tonight. My money (a whole £5) is on AlphaGo, but I'd love to see Lee Sedol win. I read earlier that Google have just given their biggest ever press conference about this (they're flown over to Korea, and there's a lot of interest in Asia generally).

 

 

If AlphaGo manages to win, I doubt anybody can beat it.. it would be a huge coincidence for the technology to reach a level that is exactly between the current number 1 and current number 2 player in the world. And, Lee Sedol has 18 international titles to his name (I think that's only one player has ever managed more!).

 

Whatever happens tonight, he still has better hair than the bot.

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That was an incredible game.

 

in case anybody is wondering, it was pretty close. I think the estimated margin of victory was less than komi. And, I'm stunned that AlphaGo took more time to think than Lee. Truly incredible the amount of processing power required to beat the human brain.

 

I expect the rest of the matches will be similar, but perhaps there is still hope.

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I will continue talking to myself.

 

I've heard that the first game drew an estimated TV audience of 80million. That's larger than e-sports isn't it? Getting up to Superbowl sized figures.

 

Also, this is from the front page from one of the chinese newspaper websites.

 

"Lee seemed to have been slightly dominating by the middle of the match, but the mood was abruptly overturned as AlphaGo's mistakes began to be regarded as intentional moves from a broader perspective.

At the first sight, AlphaGo made two fatal mistakes, which commentators described as algorithm errors and incomprehensible. The result was unpredictable until near the end due to the incomprehensible moves, which commentators said humans cannot imagine. It proved that AlphaGo's choices, which seemed to have been mistakes at the first sight, were right and calculated ones based on its predicted final result.

AlphaGo's moves may look like mistakes from humans' perspectives and according to ways that professional human players learned how to play Go, but the result showed AlphaGo's broader perspective only aimed at winning an entire game despite losses in some parts of the board, experts noted."

 

I'm glad there's now a break so I can have a proper night's sleep. (The games start 4am UK time!!!)

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I don't know enough about actually playing go to be able to appreciate the games themselves but I'm more and more in awe of the system.

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I've heard that the first game drew an estimated TV audience of 80million. That's larger than e-sports isn't it? Getting up to Superbowl sized figures.

It's pretty easy to beat the super bowl with international distribution, still cool that so many people care.

 

I had heard its going to be five games, but is it best of five or will the human actually have to lose five times?

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It's pretty easy to beat the super bowl with international distribution, still cool that so many people care.

 

I had heard its going to be five games, but is it best of five or will the human actually have to lose five times?

 

I believe they will play all five games.

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I believe they will play all five games.

Yes, I heard today that they will play the remaining two games as well so looks like it's going to be a beatdown 5-0.

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Yes, I heard today that they will play the remaining two games as well so looks like it's going to be a beatdown 5-0.

 

 

You spoke too soon. What a win. Lee Sedol found some magic. How he found that wedge, I will never know. Stunning sucess, and demonstrated the the AI isn't quite yet supreme (it broke down in a weird way towards the end once it was losing)

 

And, so much fun to see this story shoot straight up to the front story on the Asian press again. The fact that this boring turn based abstract strategy game can keep the media's attention for over a week of games is amazing.

 

 

[and aww. he looks so happy in the Press Conference].

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Fascinating that Lee has note that AlphaGo plays more strongly when taking white stones (and hence requested to take Black for the final game so he can try and beat it when it's playing to its strengths).

 

A lovely example of how two seemingly identical symmetric sides can still lead to asymmetric play (thanks to first move advantage being balanced out with komi). This simple different leads to several differences in strategy (if white wants to take sente during the fuseki, white has to pass up the chance to take the final corner, and black favours high scoring games where white favours low scoring games). I've always thought this is a nicer way to do asymmetry than the type of hard coded rulesets in many computer games. It's just so elegant.

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That fourth game is exactly why I expected them to play all five games.  Even though AlphaGo technically won the match after the third win, the real point here is to gather data and I think a human win provides a pretty valuable data point.

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That fourth game is exactly why I expected them to play all five games.  Even though AlphaGo technically won the match after the third win, the real point here is to gather data and I think a human win provides a pretty valuable data point.

 

Agree 100%. There was some very interesting behaviour from the bot in the last game (not to mention a beautiful tesuji from Lee that will no doubt go down in Go history). 

 

It's a shame they aren't playing a full 10 game jubungo. It would be interesting to see if Lee could figure out how to play to the bots strengths over a longer series of games (the AI has no ability to learn game to game).

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You should. It is a beautiful game. And it can be as simple of as deep as you choose (or rather, it depends on how strong an opponent you want to be able to play!). But it is an incredibly simple ruleset. Please don't hesitate to ask me anything.

 

Best way to learn the absolute basics is here: http://playgo.to/iwtg/

 

If you have a local club, I'm sure they'd love to see you. Otherwise, there's KGS, OGS, and a load of other servers.

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Thanks, gonna have a look at that.

I don't believe there are any clubs around here, which is too bad. Playing online is not as appealing, but I'm gonna give it a go (no pun intended, I swear).

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Alright, I have a dumb question :D

In the first/second panel here: http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/count.html

Yes the black stones on the right side will be captured, but doesn't that reduce white's territory anyway since the stones don't count towards it?

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Alright, I have a dumb question :D

In the first/second panel here: http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/count.html

Yes the black stones on the right side will be captured, but doesn't that reduce white's territory anyway since the stones don't count towards it?

 

it does but black has to put down stones so won't black either reduce its own territory OR commit to having more stones getting captured on right?

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Alright, I have a dumb question :D

In the first/second panel here: http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/count.html

Yes the black stones on the right side will be captured, but doesn't that reduce white's territory anyway since the stones don't count towards it?

 

 

I think you more or less understand.

 

Also, don't worry TOO much about understanding everything like this. Its very simple,  but can be a little tricky to explain! The concept of "dead" stones (but not actually captured) often confuses new players.

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That one thing that's really missing from SmartGo. I wish it would show scoring so I can learn what to watch for.

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The best advice I can suggest is to log onto KGS or online-go and play some real people :) it's likely that there are loads of new players just now, so it shouldn't be a problem finding other beginners. Then you also get the fun of working your way up and established rating system (30kyu is a new player).

 

And, remember the proverb - lose your first 50 games as fast as possible. you won't learn much at this stage from trying to figure out the right move (as you'll be thinking about the wrong things anyway!). So just play for fun, don't spend too longer thinking, and your brain will pick up some patterns on its own :)

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Does KGS explain scoring when you finish a match? I guess what I'm getting at is that SmartGo has tuned in pretty well to my skill level and I find myself losing by 1/2 point sometimes, and I'd really like to see how it's calculated to understand which stones I could have contested to win that point.

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