
AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol 3-0 [video] - Fede_V
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUAmTYHEyM8
======
Radim
In a recent interview [1], Hassabis (DeepMind founder) said they'd try
training AlphaGo from scratch next, so it learns from first principles.
Without the bootstrapping step of "learn from a database of human games",
which introduce human prejudice.

As a Go player, I'm really excited to see what kind of play will come from
that!

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/10/11192774/demis-hassabis-
in...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/10/11192774/demis-hassabis-interview-
alphago-google-deepmind-ai)

~~~
awwducks
That would be amazing if it could achieve the same levels (or higher) without
the bootstrapping.

The niggling thought in my mind was that AlphaGo's strength is built on human
strength.

~~~
radicalbyte
Human strength is also "built on human strength" so I don't see the problem?
:)

~~~
sleepychu
It's not truly artificial if it's using a human playbook. (Is the problem
posed by the parent, I believe.)

~~~
Barrin92
What is 'truly artificial'?

Neural networks are modeled after biological systems to begin with, I don't
the that's a meaningful concept at all.

~~~
niels_olson
Well, we can extend that to say the biological systems are self-assembled
randomly and selected through evolutionary algorithms, starting from random
molecules on the sea floor.

------
awwducks
Perhaps the last big question was whether AlphaGo could play ko positions.
AlphaGo played quite well in that ko fight and furthermore, even played away
from the ko fight allowing Lee Sedol to play twice in the area.

I definitely did not expect that.

Major credit to Lee Sedol for toughing that out and playing as long as he did.
It was dramatic to watch as he played a bunch of his moves with only 1 or 2
seconds left on the clock.

~~~
hasenj
> as he played a bunch of his moves with only 1 or 2 seconds left on the
> clock.

That's on purpose to make full use of time and think about the next move

~~~
awwducks
As a spectator, I was on the edge of my seat :)

As a 3d amateur, I'm really curious about when he resigned. It really seemed
like he was playing the position out to go for the win (or perhaps to see how
AlphaGo would fare in ko). It didn't look like he was searching for a place to
resign.

~~~
jacobolus
The AGA commentator (Cho Hyeyeon 9p, at
[https://www.youtube.com/c/usgoweb/](https://www.youtube.com/c/usgoweb/)) had
already been calling the game completely hopeless for Lee Sedol for nearly 2
hours at that point, estimating Lee down by at least 20–30 points before komi,
unless by some miracle he could win the ko fight.

~~~
yeukhon
Right, all about one or two wrong moves by AlphaGo. He still had a chance
around the time Lee started to play the bottom of the board. But AlphaGo did
not fall for the trick. I believed the English commentator said Lee could
build a ladder but wasn't sure if he meant to say whether that technique would
defeat AlphaGo or not.

~~~
pushrax
I did not watch that stream, but IIRC the first move Sedol played in the
bottom was a ladder breaker, specifically because _white_ had a difficult-to-
see ladder that worked a move earlier than black's ladder on the right side.
At that point, there was no way Sedol could win, so the commentator you
referenced probably did not mean any such ladder would defeat AlphaGo.

Edit: M5 was definitely played as a ladder breaker, so the above is correct.

------
bronz
Once again, I am so glad that I caught this on the live-stream because it will
be in the history books. The implications of these games are absolutely
tremendous. Consider GO: it is a game of sophisticated intuition. We have
arguably created something that beats the human brain in its own arena,
although the brain and AlphaGO do not use the same underlying mechanisms. And
this is the supervised model. Once unsupervised learning begins to blossom we
will witness something that is as significant as the emergence of life itself.

~~~
danmaz74
> Consider GO: it is a game of sophisticated intuition

It's still a game that can be described in terms of clear state-machine rules.
The real challenge for AI is making sense and acting in the real world, which
can't be described in such way. I consider advances in self-driving cars much
more interesting in that sense - even if, even there, there are at least some
rule-based constraints that can be applied to simplify the representation of
the "world state".

~~~
chubot
Yeah, I think it's accurate to say that driving a car is harder in some sense
than playing Go, based on the fact that the AI for Go came first. A lot of
people have been working on self-driving cars for a long time now, and it's
very monetizable, unlike Go.

~~~
chubot
Also, it should be noted that in Go, we're trying to beat the BEST human
player, and have done so. In driving, we're just trying to be "good enough" or
safe enough -- it doesn't have to be the safest driver in the world.

Beating the average human Go player was probably accomplished decades ago,
whereas it's not even clear if we're safer than the average human driver
(under all conditions).

These tasks are just wildly different, and yes I think it's basically all due
to the fact that Go's state is so easily represented by a computer, and the
goal is so concrete.

~~~
arstin
Sort of a tangent from the thread: I get the point about "good enough" at the
moment, but I wonder if car AI really does need to perform _much_ safer than
any human driver before truly autonomous vehicles should be allowed to see
widespread adoption. I'm thinking about the difficult problems re: legal and
moral responsibility for human written/guided/trained programs like car AI. As
well as the fact that, unlike in Go, real people's very lives are at stake in
the program's successful performance. We already seem to have met the
requirements for a research project---which is still unbelievable to me!---and
I wonder how long the last leg will take.

~~~
pixl97
AI cars could be safer now in most cases by simply not doing dumb illegal
stuff.

The real problem is dealing with all the edge cases. Think of this edge case.
You pull up to a red light, a guy with a gun starts running at your car in a
manner you perceive to be threatening.

You as a human are most likely going to step on the gas and get the hell out
of there saving yourself, at some risk of causing a traffic accident.

The car will just sit there till the light turns green while the windows get
shot out and you get dragged out of the car.

------
pushrax
It's important to remember that this is an accomplishment of humanity, not a
defeat. By constructing this AI, we are simply creating another tool for
advancing our state of being.

(or something like that)

~~~
alextgordon
What is our purpose if computers can do everything better than us?

It feels like computers have taken one aspect of humanness: logic. Computers
could do arithmetic, do algebra, play chess, and now they can play go.

It hurts because logic is usually thought to be one of the highest of human
characteristics. Yes computers might never be able to replicate emotion, but
even dogs have that.

There's still some aspects we have left to call our own. Computers perform
poorly at language-based tasks. They can't write books, write math papers,
compose symphonies. I hope it stays that way.

~~~
samizdatum
You're implying that if something can be outdone it doesn't have a purpose,
which seems to rule out purposes for pretty much everything.

I'm sure there's always someone that can write books or maths papers or
symphonies better than you. I don't think this robs you of purpose, unless
your purpose is to be the absolute best at something.

Anyway, I find it curious that you would say logic is a quintessentially human
trait, because humans are naturally quite bad at logic.

~~~
faitswulff
The difference between being outdone by another human and being outdone by a
computer is that the computer's efforts are nearly infinitely reproducible,
given the processing power.

So a more apt analogy would be if there was someone inside every cellphone who
could write books, papers, or symphonies better than you. That day is coming.

~~~
Anderkent
And it would be great. Think of all the great symphonies and books!

~~~
zematis
And the economic preduction. And the influx of wealth into underdeveloped
countries. And all of the people not dying.

------
wnkrshm
While he may not be number one in the Go rankings afaik, Lee Sedol will be the
name in the history books: Deep Blue against Garry Kasparov, AlphaGo against
Lee Sedol. Lots of respect to Sedol for toughing it out.

------
Yuioup
I really like the moments when Alpha-Go would play a move and the commentators
would look stunned and go silent for a 1-2 seconds. "That was an unexpected
move", they would say.

~~~
starshadowx2
In game 2 there was a point where Michael Redmond seemed to do a triple take
and couldn't believe the move AlphaGo played.

~~~
Yuioup
Yeah they seem to forget that Alpha-Go is looking deep into the future. I have
not read the Nature paper but I assume it's playing out possible moves way
into the future.

At some point it figured that the Ko fight at the bottom was already won.
Hence that white move at the top which nobody saw coming.

Another interesting moment was when Michael Redmond said "A human would
typically not spend too much time thinking on this obvious move". This was the
move on the right-hand side somewhere. What this tells me is that human
players rush through some moves because they seem obvious but since Alpha-Go
is a machine, it does not care about obvious and non-obvious. It's calculating
the entire board through to the end and is not interested in "local fights".

~~~
schoen
> I have not read the Nature paper but I assume it's playing out all possible
> moves.

To some relatively small depth, right? I hear the estimate that all possible
moves in a Go game probably can't be physically represented in the universe
(unless we learn much more about the structure of games' evolution).

~~~
tel
No, it plays deep but only so broad. It uses a neural net (which playing by
itself without MCTS already beats Pachi with like 80% probability) to sketch
out the best moves until the end and then rates each move on its chance of
winning.

This objective function is why Go playing AI jumped hugely in the last 10
years.

------
flyingbutter
The Chinese 9 Dan player Ke Jie basically said the game is lost after around
40 mins or so. He still thinks that he has a 60% chance of winning against
AlphaGo (down from 100% on day one). But I doubt Google will bother to go to
China and challenge him.

~~~
Radim
Challenging Ke Jie is way too small a goal for DeepMind at this point.

I wonder if even the idea from the AGA stream today, to get all the best pros
in the world together and challenge AlphaGo as a team, is enough.

Perhaps releasing the core AlphaGo as open source (to the extent it's not
dependent on internal Google machinery), or at least publishing its trained
model, may be the next step. Let people "challenge themselves" however they
want.

EDIT: Also, Lee Sedol had his time in the sun, but commiserations to Ke Jie.
He's just 19, already number #1 in the world, his whole career in front of
him... and this happens.

~~~
nkurz
_I wonder if even the idea from the AGA stream today, to get all the best pros
in the world together and challenge AlphaGo as a team, is enough._

Has this been tried? That is, have Players 2-9 (or some subset) ever competed
as a group against a dominant Player 1? Unless it's been tested, I wouldn't
take it for granted that a group would beat an individual.

~~~
fma
Too many chiefs in a village. Can you imagine trying to explain why this move
is correct because "20 moves in the future" it proves to be right. It would
probably take an hour per move.

Also I mentioned in a previous post...the human style of playing go needs to
adapt to AlphaGo. That's why the commentators say "oh that was odd" since a
human would not make that move as its unorthodox, but turns out to be right.

If the top 1-10 had a chance to play AlphaGo privately for months they may
have a better chance.

~~~
iopq
It works somewhat well in con-go.net, even if I disagree with a lot of the
move ordering as of late. But I am on the white team and we're winning, so I
guess the black team made more mistakes.

------
jamornh
Based on all the commentaries, it seems that Lee Sedol was really not ahead
during the game at any point during the game... and I think everybody has
their answer regarding whether AlphaGo can perform in a Ko fight. That's a
yes.

------
kybernetikos
Go was the last perfect information game I knew where the best humans
outperformed the best computers. Anyone know any others? Are all perfect
information games lost at this point? Can we _design_ one to keep us winning?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Why bother? It's working with radically incomplete and imperfect information
where the core of human intelligence actually lies.

~~~
kybernetikos
> Why bother?

Because the process might tell us something interesting and useful about AI
and ourselves.

------
bainsfather
It is interesting how fast this has happened compared to chess.

In 1978 chess IM David Levy won a 6 match series 4.5-1.5 - he was better than
the machine, but the machine gave him a good game (the game he lost was when
he tried to take it on in a tactical game, where the machine proved stronger).
It took until 1996/7 for computers to match and surpass the human world
champion.

I'd say the difference was that for chess, the algorithm was known (minimax +
alpha-beta search) and it was computing power that was lacking - we had to
wait for Moore's law to do its work. For go, the algorithm (MCTS + good neural
nets + reinforcement learning) was lacking, but the computing power was
already available.

------
partycoder
Some professionals labeled some AlphaGo moves as being unoptimal or slow. In
reality, Alpha Go doesn't try to maximize its score, only its probability of
winning.

~~~
PeCaN
From watching it I'm almost inclined to say it maximizes its chances of _not
losing_ over necessarily winning.

~~~
spicyj
Sorry, but what's the difference?

~~~
thom
There really isn't, from the point of view of AlphaGo. But for someone playing
Go (or any game), it's a hint that perhaps one should focus on things that can
go wrong more than furthering your own aggressive plan.

It's certainly a feature of the best Magic: the Gathering pros, for example -
their play is marked by the cards they play around, even when seemingly far
ahead.

~~~
dingbat
interesting that "not losing" (avoiding mistakes that lead to "blowing up")
also seems to be common philosophy shared among very successful investors of
wildly differing styles, who are playing another sort of game in the markets

------
Eliezer
My (long) commentary here:

[https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154018209759228](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154018209759228)

Sample:

At this point it seems likely that Sedol is actually far outclassed by a
superhuman player. The suspicion is that since AlphaGo plays purely for
_probability of long-term victory_ rather than playing for points, the fight
against Sedol generates boards that can falsely appear to a human to be
balanced even as Sedol's probability of victory diminishes. The 8p and 9p pros
who analyzed games 1 and 2 and thought the flow of a seemingly Sedol-favoring
game 'eventually' shifted to AlphaGo later, may simply have failed to read the
board's true state. The reality may be a slow, steady diminishment of Sedol's
win probability as the game goes on and Sedol makes subtly imperfect moves
that _humans_ think result in even-looking boards...

The case of AlphaGo is a helpful concrete illustration of these concepts [from
AI alignment theory]...

Edge instantiation. Extremely optimized strategies often look to us like
'weird' edges of the possibility space, and may throw away what we think of as
'typical' features of a solution. In many different kinds of optimization
problem, the maximizing solution will lie at a vertex of the possibility space
(a corner, an edge-case). In the case of AlphaGo, an extremely optimized
strategy seems to have thrown away the 'typical' production of a visible point
lead that characterizes human play...

~~~
taneq
This is reminding me more and more of the central theme of the book
Echopraxia, which was that when dealing with superhuman intelligences, you are
_by definition_ not smart enough to even know whether you're winning.

~~~
jules
When I play chess against a computer I can see very easily that I'm not
winning.

~~~
GolDDranks
But that is most likely be because of the structure of Chess. The evaluation
of single board position is more "linear" and certainly easier than in Go.

If the utility function is about winning, going though easily-evalutable board
positions might be the straightforward route.

If the utility function is to win while minimizing your estimate of of you
losing, you might see different results.

Plus if you know that you are playing against a stronger opponent, your prior
might bias your perception of the board situation.

~~~
pmoriarty
It would be interesting to see how computers fare against humans on a 19x19
chess board, and how easily a human could evaluate such a board.

------
niuzeta
Impressive work by Google research team. I'm both impressed and scared.

This is our Deep Blue moment folks. a history is made.

~~~
esturk
Give credit where credit is due. This is DeepMind's research, and Google
acquired them in 2014. Of course, Google gave them a lot of resources to train
AlphaGo. But let's not bury the subsidiary, or I guess they would both be subs
to Alphabet now making the two even less related.

~~~
drjesusphd
If they wanted ultimate credit, they shouldn't have sold. They made a judgment
call and part of that is Google gets a share of the congratulations.

~~~
Cyph0n
Yes, but the team is Google DeepMind, not "Google research team".

------
atrudeau
It would be nice if AlphaGo emitted the estimated probability of it winning
every time a move is made. I wonder what this curve looks like. I would
imagine mistakes by the human opponent would give nice little jumps in the
curve. If the commentary is correct, we would expect very high probability
40-60 minutes into the game. Perhaps something crushing, like 99,9%

~~~
Symmetry
It did, apparently. I wish that information was public.

[http://www.nature.com/news/the-go-files-ai-computer-wins-
fir...](http://www.nature.com/news/the-go-files-ai-computer-wins-first-match-
against-master-go-player-1.19544)

 _For me, the key moment came when I saw Hassabis passing his iPhone to other
Google executives in our VIP room, some three hours into the game. From their
smiles, you knew straight away that they were pretty sure they were winning –
although the experts providing the live public commentary on the match that
was broadcast to our room weren’t clear on the matter, and remained confused
up to the end of the game just before Lee resigned. (I 'm told that other
high-level commentators did see the writing on the wall, however)._

------
skarist
We are indeed witnessing and living a historic moment. It is difficult not to
feel awestruck. Likewise, it is difficult not to feel awestruck at how a wet
1.5 kg clump of carbon-based material (e.g. Lee Sedol brain) can achieve this
level of mastery of a board game, that it takes such an insane amount of
computing power to beat it. So, finally we do have a measure of the computing
power required to play Go at the professional level. And it is immense, or to
apply a very crude approximation based on Moore's law, it requires about 4096
times more computing power to play Go at the professional level than it does
to play chess. Ok, this approx may be a bit crude :)

But maybe this is all just human prejudice... i.e. what this really goes to
show is that in the final analysis all board games we humans have inveted and
played are "trival", i.e. they are all just like tic-tac-toe just with a
varying degree of complexity.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I don't think it is human prejudice, Deepmind can play Go and it cannot drive
a car, Lee Sedol's brain can do both. Understanding the nature of cognition
will open up new capabilities just as understanding the nature of genetics
will open up new capabilities or understanding the nature of the cosmos Etc.

What is most interesting for me is that the nature of solving the problem "how
do I win at Go?" is one that has not been, historically, one that computers
could solve. Compute the ballistic trajectory of an artillery shell? Easy.
Compute a winning strategy on the fly? Impossible. But by creating tools that
allow computers to work on those problems we open up the things that can be
improved and automated and that has historically improved the experience.

~~~
skarist
I wholeheartedly agree. I just had a "we feeble humans" moment when I made my
comment about our prejudice. And as you point out Sedol's brain can of course
do a lot more than just play Go. So, my feeling of feebleness on behalf of
humanity was thoroughly unfounded! In fact, it can be argued that our brains
are probably too powerful computers for our own good. But who knows, maybe
things will conspire and turn us into seals living of some obscure beach on
the Galápagos in about a million years.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_%28novel%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_%28novel%29))

------
jonah
Cho Hyeyeon 9p's commentary on the American Go Association YouTube channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkyVB4Nm9ac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkyVB4Nm9ac)

------
dwaltrip
AlphaGo won solidly by all accounts. This is an incredible moment. We are now
in the post-humanity go era.

The one solace was that Lee Sedol got his ko =) however, AlphaGo was up to the
task and handled it well.

------
seanwilson
Super interesting to watch this unfold. So what game should AI tackle next?
I've heard imperfect information games are harder for AI...would the AlphaGo
approach not work well for these?

~~~
jonbaer
Hassabis discusses some StarCraft here ...
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/10/11192774/demis-hassabis-
in...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/10/11192774/demis-hassabis-interview-
alphago-google-deepmind-ai) ... good interview.

~~~
seanwilson
I read that too. It's interesting StarCraft is suggested instead of any
classic board games. It sounds like Go is the pinnacle of board games then.

Would StarCraft be the last game AI has to beat?

~~~
21
No, after StarCraft they suggested 3D games (eg: Call of Duty, ...). Mind you,
this is playing based on the pixels, not based on direct access to the game
structures as bots do today.

The from playing Call of Duty to controling a robot with a gun in the real
world it's a small step :)

~~~
JibberMeTimbers
I don't like the idea of FPS'. We'd expect them to behave the humans when they
play FPS - they run looking forward and will occasionally look left or right
and follow some predetermined pathing that they are familiar with.

With an AI, if we base it on pixels, what they will do is spin around 360
degrees about 60 times a second while moving forward so that it can maximize
all of the pixels inputted at a time. It would compare it against the stored
level design and shoot at anything that is off (or against character models).
I can just see that it's not going to behave like anything we'd expect.

~~~
duskwuff
The same would likely be true of an RTS. An AI could scroll the viewport
around and click units to issue orders at ludicrous speeds. Even if it had to
use the same interface as a human, it'd still have a huge mechanical
advantage.

------
partycoder
I don't think Ke Jie would win against Alpha Go either.

~~~
pmontra
I agree. Lee lost a title 3-2 to Ke Je recently but he lost very convincingly
against AlphaGo. Ke Je is not that stronger than Lee. He's going to lose too
but he's 18 so I understand that he's feeling he can do anything.

My feeling is that AlphaGo could be a couple of stones stronger than the best
pros. Considering that dans are capped at 9 but there are 9 dans that always
win against some other 9 dans, the best pros could be 10 dan on their scale.
That would also be 10 dan on the amateur scale (European, Americans are
usually one stone gentler and Japanese much more than that). AlphaGo could be
12d amateur or, don't know, 14-15 dan pro? (pro levels are on a finer scale)

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Do you know what the current limit is on a handicap that a professional player
can overcome? Is there a known theoretical limit? That's a possible 'endgame'
for go ai.

~~~
pmontra
There must be some limit because the number of the possible moves is finite.
How many handicap stones the current professionals are from that limit... who
knows. Apparently AlphaGo could set a better lower limit but it should play
with many more pros, and start giving handicap if needed.

I wonder if Google will make it available to pros outside these official
matches. It's not that Deep Blue played so much after winning with Kasparov in
1997, right? Kasparov asked a rematch and IBM refused. Deep Blue never played
again.

Our computers are stronger than it now, mainly thanks to advances in the
algorithms. Deep Blue used to crunch many more positions per second than the
current chess engines do on standard PC. Still they're stronger. AlphaGo is
running on 1920 CPUs and 280 GPUs, so either research trims down its
algorithms or we wait for CPUs with 1024 cores. But at the current size they
won't fit below the keyboard of a laptop :-)

~~~
tunichtgut
This hardware setup is crazy. Given alone 280 GPUs is insane.

~~~
visarga
That's just for the training phase. In play mode it only uses 40. And the top
supercomputer has 3 million cores, so, AlphaGo is not such a big computer
either.

------
hasenj
Seems to be playing at super-human levels.

I'm no where near a strong player but it seems like AlphaGo is far ahead of
Lee Sedol.

~~~
mathgenius
It seems like in all three games, AlphaGo plays a thick move that looks a bit
baffling to the commentators, but then miraculously those moves become hugely
profitable somewhat later on in the game.

~~~
tome
Is it possible that _all_ of AlphaGo's strength is in these baffling moves? If
humans played enough games against AlphaGo and discovered how to counter the
baffling moves, is it plausible that AlphaGo's strength would be lost?

~~~
alphydan
Watching the game and the commentary there's an eerie sensation that AlphaGo
is just going along playing the petty local games with Lee Sedol. It's very
anthropocentric, but you could imagine AlphaGo saying "I could have crushed
you from the start ... but I'll just play along and do that one move to give
you the illusion that it was close".

But maybe it could have 40 of those moves to play an incredibly confusing game
for humans. I think giving the machine a big handicap against pros might
reveal it's true colours ...

~~~
hasenj
It was stated by one of the developers that AlphaGo doesn't play to maximize
the number of points it wins by. It's satisfied to win by one point. It
maximizes the probability of winning. It plays thick moves and tries to
simplify the board.

If the player forces it to a fight, it will fight back, but that's only
because losing the fight will definitely lose the game.

------
dkopi
One can only hope that in the final battle between the remaining humans and
the robots, it won't be a game of Go that decides the fate of humanity.

------
starshadowx2
I'm very interested to see what the Google DeepMind team applies themselves to
in the future.

~~~
pmyjavec
That's going to be getting to know even more about you and the probability of
you clicking on an advertisement, stakeholder, shareholder profits!

~~~
starshadowx2
I don't understand your comment.

~~~
pmyjavec
I'm saying that thing is created for Google and it's shareholders and will
ultimately be used to read your mind and sell you advertisements.

------
awwducks
I am really curious about the reviews from An Youngil 8p and Myungwan Kim 9p.
The commentary by Redmond always tend to leave something to be desired.

~~~
jonah
Myungwan Kim 9p and Cho Hyeyeon 9p's commentary on the American Go Association
YouTube channel:

Game 1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZugVil2v4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZugVil2v4w)

Game 2:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitoPhtGWJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitoPhtGWJQ)

Game 3:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkyVB4Nm9ac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkyVB4Nm9ac)

~~~
awwducks
Thanks, jonah!

I recall Andrew mentioning that Myungwan will be back to comment games 4 and
5?

------
hyperion2010
I really want to see how a team of humans would do against alpha-go with a 3
or 4 hour time limit.

~~~
_snydly
Yeah, if AlphaGO wins all 5, I'd next like to see some Blitz Go (if that's a
thing).

~~~
daveguy
Blitz go would be even more heavily favored toward AlphaGo. AG didn't spend
more than 10 seconds or so per move until the meat of the midgame. Human pros
were losing blitz chess long before they were losing long game chess.

------
dynjo
How long before AlphaGo also participates in the post-match press conference I
wonder...

~~~
Jach
In the first press conference I was half expecting that Google would translate
and speak the Korean for the livestream, and not even point it out as a very
big deal. If anyone asks, it's just an "oh yeah, we solved that problem ages
ago." But more seriously, those translators were very good, they didn't seem
troubled at all by the long speeches.

------
yeukhon
I wonder what if you put the top 10 players in a room, team up and play with
Alpha-Go. They are allowed to make one move within a 1-hour period and they
can only play up to 8 hours a day. I wonder what the outcome would be.

Anyway, I think AlphaGo is a great training companion. I think Lee felt he's
learning.

Finally, I also feel that while experience is crucial, the older generation
would flush out by the younger generation every decade. I wonder if age really
play a role in championship - not that AlphaGo isn't considered a 1000 years
old "human" given it has played thousands of games already.

------
mikhail-g-kan
Interestingly, I feel proud of AI, despite humans lost. It's the progress
toward our end as classic human species

------
gandalfu
Its a matter of language.

Our model of representation of Go fails at expressing the game/strategies of
AlphaGo is showing, we are communicating in the board in different languages,
no wonder everyone looking the at games is stomped by the machine "moves".

Our brains lack the capacity of implementing such algorithms (understanding
such languages), but we can still create them. We might see in the future
engine A played against engine B and enjoy the matches.

No one is surprised by a machine doing a better job with integer
programming/operational research/numerical solutions etc.

------
zhouyisu
Next move: how about beating human at online dating?

~~~
femto113
Pretty sure that's already been done

[http://gizmodo.com/how-ashley-madison-hid-its-fembot-con-
fro...](http://gizmodo.com/how-ashley-madison-hid-its-fembot-con-from-users-
and-in-1728410265)

------
eemax
What happens if you give the human player a handicap? I wonder if the games
are really as close as the commentators say, or if it's just a quirk of the
MCST algorithm.

~~~
ConbrastanJorji
The great go champion Otake Hideo famously said that if he were to play go
against God Himself, he would take only a three stone handicap, and if his
life depended on it, he would take four. Alphago's not perfect, but it would
still be very interesting to watch such a handicapped game.

~~~
pgodzin
Can it even play a handicapped game? I'm assuming the handicap means the other
play can begin with several stones on the board. AlphaGo would have no
training on such a configuration and would likely not know how to approach it.

~~~
NolF
Well the same thing was mentioned about Kos and game three showed that AlphaGo
was very effective by both having few Ko threats and playing them when
imperative. It also demonstrated effective gameplay as black with 4.4 & 4.3
opening.

Considering the large training data set, handicap games would certainly be
included. It's a great way to test aggressiveness and the effectiveness to
reduce the opponents' territory whilst building your own.

As an amateur, handicap games where you try to overcome 3 or 4 stones are some
of the most educational experiences. It requires a lot more creative thinking
and perseverance to come back from such a disadvantage.

------
xuesj
This is a milestone of AI in history. The ability of AlphaGo is amazing and
far beyond to human.

~~~
tunichtgut
I dont know if AlphaGo is "beyond" all human players.

Given AlphaGo has learned all played games from a database, its more like
AlphaGo is the essence or the sum of all experience gained from those games
played. AlphaGo is better than every player (perhaps), but it has not pushed
the game further by itself.

~~~
daveguy
Not all games came from a database. It was initialized with a database. It has
played millions of games against itself to improve beyond that. Next they will
skip the bootsrap initialization and use all self play.

------
asmyers
Does anyone know if the AlphaGo team is saving the probability of winning
assignments that AlphaGo gave its moves?

It would be fascinating to see how early AlphaGo assigned very high
probability of it winning. It would also be interesting to see if there were
particular moves which changed this assignment a lot. For instance, are there
moves that Lee Sedol made for which the win probability is very different for
the AlphaGo moves before and after?

~~~
bricemo
In the introduction to the third match, the project lead talked about how
Alphago evaluated the controversial 37th move in the second match. Apparently
the policy network decided that it had a one in 10,000 chance of a human
making that move, But the value network overrode this. So it seems like they
are recording this kind of data and looking at it in cases where it's
interesting.

~~~
asmyers
Thanks, I'm only just watching match 2 and hadn't seen that. I really hope
they publish this data. It would be incredibly interesting to construct a
"review of the game by AlphaGo" from this data.

------
asdfologist
Ke Jie's gonna be next.

[http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/AlphaGo-cant-beat-
me-s...](http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/AlphaGo-cant-beat-me-says-
Chinese-Go-grandmaster-Ke-Jie/shdaily.shtml)

"Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind's CEO, has expressed the willingness to pick
Ke as AlphaGo's next target."

------
Huhty
Full video will be available here shortly:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqYmG7hTraZA7v9Hpbps0...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqYmG7hTraZA7v9Hpbps0QNmJC4L1NE3S)

(It also includes the videos of the first 2 matches)

------
jcyw
We had Godel on the limitation of logic and Turing on the limitation of
computation. I think AI will only change the way human calls intelligence. We
used to call people who can mentally calculate large numbers genius. Lots of
that has to be re-defined.

------
theroof
Is anyone also asking themselves when they'll be able to play against this
level of AI on their mobile phone? Or formulated differently: when will an
"AlphaGo" (or equivalent) app appear in the play/app store?

In 2 years? In 1 year? In 3 months?

~~~
agildehaus
A version of AlphaGo that beat Fan Hui ran on a single machine, but a very
beefy one (48 CPUs and 8 GPUs).

Unless they can optimize it quite a bit, we won't be seeing this on a mobile
phone anytime soon. Perhaps you'll be able to pay a good hourly rate for the
cloud version.

~~~
iopq
A mobile phone version will still trounce the current AIs like CrazyStone
considering the single machine version is competitive with the cluster (can
take some games off of it)

------
mzitelli
Congratulations to AlphaGo team, curious to see if Lee Sedol will be able to
defeat it in the next matches.

------
arek_
I was using machine learning in computer chess some time ago. My commentary:
[http://arekpaterek.blogspot.com/2016/03/my-thoughts-on-
alpha...](http://arekpaterek.blogspot.com/2016/03/my-thoughts-on-alphago.html)

------
yodsanklai
All this excitement makes me want to learn a little bit about those
algorithms. I don't know anything about neural networks (but I've already
implemented a chess game a while ago). Would it be difficult to implement a
similar algorithm for a simpler game?

------
cpeterso
Does AlphaGo run in the cloud or is it a machine onsite at the match? I wonder
how small AlphaGo could be scaled down and still beat Lee Sedol. How
competitive would AlphaGo be running on an iPhone? :)

------
eternalban
My impression is that Sedol was psychologically defeated at 1-0. Computational
machines don't crack under pressure - at most they get exhausted.

------
ganwar
Incredible news. We have all heard all of the positive coverage and how
tremendous it is. What I find interesting is that how come nobody is talking
about the potential of AlphaGo as a war strategizing AI?

If you provide terrain(elevation etc.) information, AlphaGo can be used to
corner opponents into an area surrounded by mountains where AlphaGo is sitting
on the mountains. We all know what happens after that.

Don't want to kill the party but I am completely surprised with the lack of
chatter in this direction.

~~~
Gambit89
This is because of ethical reasons: one of the conditions that Deepmind made
with Google in their deal was for an "embargo on using its technology for
military and intelligence applications."

Source: [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/16/demis-
hass...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/16/demis-hassabis-
artificial-intelligence-deepmind-alphago)

------
pmyjavec
If one allowed AlphaGo to train forever, what would happen? Would it
constantly just tie against itself ?

------
oliebol
Watching this felt like watching a funeral where the commentary was the
eulogy.

------
awwducks
I guess the next question on my mind is how AlphaGo might fare in a blitz
game.

------
ptbello
Does anyone have insights on how a game between two Alpha-Gos would play out?

~~~
vl
One would win and another loose. It plays itself all the time to train.

------
Queribus
Was I in a "prophetic mode" yesterday? ;)))

------
tim333
Kind of a shame the tournament isn't closer.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I think so too. I actually feel really bad for Lee Sedol if he loses 5-0.

~~~
wagglycocks
The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Lee Sedol will have his place in history, but it would be nice if it were as
'the last human to win a game of go against AI'.

------
Queribus
Strictly speaking, "just" because Alphago finally won, that doesnt mean it was
right when claiming being ahead already.

