
Alpha Zero’s “Alien” Chess Shows the Power, and the Peculiarity, of AI - rbanffy
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609736/alpha-zeros-alien-chess-shows-the-power-and-the-peculiarity-of-ai/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2017-12-08&utm_campaign=Technology+Review&__twitter_impression=true
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FrozenVoid
Its only alien because for decades people sculpted chess to look like
accounting: AlphaZero doesn't waste time evaluating advantage in centipawns
for each position(which is unreliable long-term), because it has more general
evaluation function that is not as dependent on search algorithm as alpha-
beta. That evaluation function is just hidden behind the neural network
weights and is probably much faster than AlphaZero itself(a generic network
trainer): essentially behind it is a series of rules and heuristics that would
translate to fast classical algorithm.

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maxander
You could argue that behind the brain of a chess master is also a “series of
rules and heuristics”, but as this series may be infinitely long and isn’t
feasibly determinable it’s difficult to say in what sense that’s actually
true. Further, it’s likdly that the series of mostly-linear transforms in
AlphaZero (or, the series of neurochemical transforms in a chessmaster’s
brain) is the only form in which these rules would be efficiently computable.

One way of looking at the difference between AlphaZero and traditional game AI
is that the former uses _irreducibly conplex_ heuristics (as far as we know,)
just as we think brains are capable of.

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scotty79
> He pointed, among other examples, to the intelligence of Hassabis and his
> colleagues in devising, designing, and building the program in the first
> place. “That’s almost as impressive as a queen in the corner,” he quipped.

That sentiment that pops up whenever machines surpass humans is quite silly to
me.

As if they were discussing a crane and say: This crane can lift many tonnes of
weight more than any human can but we must remember that it was put together
from parts by strong humans, strong humans designed it and operate it, said
body building expert.

Who cares? Machines are stronger than you, calculate better than you, play
games better than you, often design better than you. And people react as if
they just found out that they have bigger d*cks than them and last longer.
Sure they do but isn't it juvenile to feel insecure and defensive each damn
time?

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bobdole1234
Turns out that really is a concern for a lot of people.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/ted-cruz-
dildo-b...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/ted-cruz-dildo-ban-
sex-devices-texas/)

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roenxi
AlphaGo isn't a human, but it played Go in a human manner. When reviewing the
games it is hard for Go players not to talk about 'intent' and 'planning'. The
actual process for making the move was actually very human, in my view.
Superhuman execution, but the basic process was how a human played.

It is interesting to see how that translates into Chess. When AlphaZero wins
it is playing games that exercise a beautiful positional judgment. There are a
couple of very elegant games where a material advantage for Stockfish just
didn't translate into a meaningful edge on the board.

If the Go experience is any guide, this is a glimpse in the direction of the
ideal we should aspire to playing Chess.

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jmmcd
> When reviewing the games it is hard for Go players not to talk about
> 'intent' and 'planning'.

An interesting point. Of course the AI is not planning with intent, but the
language is useful. But it IS seeing that if it does X, then the opponent is
likely to do Y, which will allow it to do Z. And note that when we see a human
player playing X, we say he/she is planning Z, but in reality that's not quite
true. What's happening is just the same: he/she is expecting Y, which will
allow Z. The process is not so different.

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uoaei
>Of course the AI is not planning with intent

Isn't it, though? It has an intuition built up from the memory of millions of
games it's played before. It knows that one step now leads to a good situation
later. What other definition of "intent" can you use where AZ's playstyle
doesn't fit the criteria?

And does having intent even mean anything when the goal is to win? If I intend
to pursue a certain specific action plan, is that somehow better or more
appropriate to the game than playing with infinite flexibility wrt the
possible trajectories of the game through state space?

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cyberpunk0
That "intuition" is basically guessing. Machine learning is just a new form if
brute force

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apricot
Only in the sense that _anything at all_ is just a form of brute force.

