Ask HN: Is Alpha-Go winning due to improvements in AI or raw computing power? - EwanToo
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onion2k
Does it have to be one or the other? I imagine AlphaGo is too complex to have
ever been effectively on, say, a 486, so without advances in hardware and
networking it wouldn't work. At the same time AlphaGo is solving the sort of
problem that no throw-more-computers-at-the-problem would have solved things
either.

We live in a world of subtly and nuance. It's rare that there's a simple
'black or white' answer to a question.

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dennybritz
It's both. Most of the Reinforcement and Deep Learning techniques used in
AlphaGo have been around for many years and while there are a couple of novel
algorithms many overestimate their impact. It's most a mix & match of
techniques that hasn't really been done before. Plus good engineering.

IMO compute power (GPUs) played the bigger role. DeepMind themselves say that
training AlphaGo wouldn't have been possible without access to Google's large-
scale infrastructure. They've been training it on thousands of machines
simultaneously. That's not to be confused with the hardware necessary to
_play_ the game, which isn't much and can be done on a single machine. Only
the training phase has these extreme hardware requirements.

