
Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players - partingshots
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20191127004800315
======
breatheoften
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 perform impossibly
mindless statistics on the game outcome an enormous number of times ...

To top it off — there is almost nothing “about go” to learn from watching
alpha go play ... I imagine that attempting to analyze alpha go’s victories
would produce an unending sequence of the feeling of never gaining any new
insight “into go”.

The analysis of go is now about optimizing algorithms — which _is_ interesting
— but I don’t think it’s interesting for the same reasons that someone
might’ve been passionate about go in the past ...

~~~
braythwayt
> 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 real time, in my lifetime. But
playing is still beautiful.

I will never run as fast as a horse, much less a bicycle or car. In my
lifetime cars will drive themselves more safely and faster than I can drive a
car. It will still be enjoyable.

I sincerely hope my children will live better lives and make better choices
than I did. My life is still beautiful most days...

It is our attachment to being smarter than machines that makes us unhappy. We
fear evidence that we’re not that special. But we do not need to be special to
be happy. We do not need to be special to find beauty in our pursuits.

One day, a bot will live on HN and have hundreds of times more karma than I
have. It won’t diminish the beauty of my best contributions. Perhaps the
humility of seeing this happen will actually make me a happier person.

~~~
Iv
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 is good that we dive a
bit more in our philosophical world and reach for what makes us human.

It took me a long time to understand that if you remove the pure rational
intellect, something precious still remains: the driving force that shapes our
morals. There is not rational reason to like survival. To love our children,
to do what we call good. The resons for that are moral and are, I believe,
what defines us as human at the core.

Ian Banks was spot on in calling a future civilization a "Culture". Because
when machines take over the productive work, defining our values is going to
be our full time activity. Machines may participate, but why would they add
anything we consider valuable to the core?

That's going to be an interesting transition and I am happy that I'll probably
live to see it!

~~~
allovernow
>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 grasp at uniqueness to preserve self.

An interesting thought occurs to me though, with the proliferation of various
NN architectures, and the idea that such nets, if scaled and installed to
power humanoid robots, would effectively learn different heuristics after
training on chaotically different data, it's quite possible that machines will
also gradually evolve individuality and something rather close to personality.

Perhaps individuality is an intrinsic, emergent property in any system of
generally intelligent and learning agents. Like a 3+ body on steroids,
millions, if not billions of dimensions.

Also interesting to consider that the emergence of uniqueness among a system
of said agents seems to increase entropy, a presently unique to life property
given that everything inanimate in the universe does exactly the opposite. The
more I think of general AI, the more I have trouble distinguishing it from the
only other sentient intelligence we know of.

~~~
tripzilch
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.

~~~
allovernow
I don't know if we have an answer to the question of whether insects have
personalities. But perhaps their intelligence is not general enough, they're
not, as far as we know, sentient. Maybe that's the difference between an
automaton and a soul

------
karmakaze
I've spent so many years playing and hearing about how Go will not be solved
in our lifetime that the day AlphaGo won 4/5 games v Lee Sedol marked my
personal timeline into what came before and after. I walked around all day in
a daze watching people as they go about their daily lives as if nothing had
happened.

I've heard it said that man landing on the moon was like that for them, but I
didn't understand as it was the only world I knew.

Now I can appreciate that these were the firsts of many singularities yet to
come in AI and space exploration and I hope to live to witness a few more (but
not too many).

~~~
shkkmo
Go still isn't solved (neither is chess), we just have a machine good at
knowing which parts of the search space are worth checking.

~~~
hindsightRegret
I think achieving superiority over humans is practically solving the problem
though. Solving chess or go by going through a complete search space seems
more like a hardware/computational goal than a practical ml/ai goal.

~~~
2bitencryption
It all hinges on your definition of "solved".

"Solved" in the AI/game theory has a very strict definition. It indicates that
you have _formally proven_ that one of the players can _guarantee_ an outcome
from the very beginning of the game.

The less-strict definition being thrown around here in the comments is more
like "This AI can always beat this human because it is much stronger."

~~~
TheGallopedHigh
I think most people discussing this mean the later, less pedantic option. I
mean, that’s the spirit of AI. Can we make it think like a human, or even more
so. We are the yardstick.

~~~
shkkmo
That is a silly mis-use of the term and that is not being pedantic. A problem
isn't solved just because you beat the existing solution (i.e. human players).
As long as there is the potential for a better solution that can beat your
solution there is work to be done.

------
Barrin92
I think this is a strange reason to retire and as the article points out it
might also simply be due to the legal conflict he is currently in with the
KBA.

Chess engines have been defeating humans for 20+ years (and are overwhelmingly
stronger for a long time), but that hasn't diminished the interest in
competitive chess, because the human element of competition and struggle and
deep fundamental appreciation for the game is what makes it worthwhile
pursuing.

AlphaGo can play go but it cannot appreciate the beauty of the game (at least
as of yet, and I don't think it would make the game worse if it could), and so
I don't think there's a meaningful conflict between humans and machines.

If someone invented some sort of superhuman math proving engine tomorrow it
would not diminish the beauty of maths and I don't think anyone would quit the
field. Just like in chess it ought to motivate people to understand their
field better.

~~~
visarga
> AlphaGo can play go but it cannot appreciate the beauty of the game

On the contrary, appreciating the game is the core of what AlphaGo does. In
order to search the tree of moves it learns how to play (expand search) and
how to evaluate (cut off branches of search). I believe it might appreciate
the game on a deeper level than humans, in its own unique way. Of course it
can't appreciate the social aspect of the game and all that comes with it.

~~~
anigbrowl
AlphaGo doesn't appreciate the game at all. It is just trying to survive in a
hostile environment. You might as well say that your gut bacteria appreciate
the food at your favorite restaurant better than you do.

Put another way, Chess is literally a matter of life and death for AlphaGo,
because chess is _all it knows._ It has no exterior context for which chess is
a metaphor.

~~~
visarga
> AlphaGo doesn't appreciate the game at all.

It's 'appreciating' the value of various states and moves, in light of a vast
trove of experience.

------
eagsalazar2
Isn't saying AI is the future of Go like saying cars are the future of
sprinting? I mean who cares if machines are faster/better/smarter than us at
any particular task? That is true in millions of ways where humans still enjoy
competing against each other. Maybe what's needed is just a perspective change
where we stop thinking of Go as being against any other agent and make it,
like every other human competition, against other humans.

~~~
avs733
Another way to look at your metaphor is that research on exercise physiology
has shown the enormous importance of rest and proper nutrition during
training. Prior to cars, getting from place to place and access to optimal
nutrition were both mediated by transport over long distances.

AI is the future of Go because it enables those new perspectives and new
processes by which human players can learn. AI is smart-dumb, looking for
patterns beyond the human capacity, but limited by the data on existing human
players that has been provided to them.

Strava hasn't made running races pointless. I can compare my runs to others
but that is a very different metric then beating them in a head to head race.

~~~
babesh
Do these AIs actually have much of a strategy? Is the strategy mostly correct
evaluations of positions and optimized search?

~~~
EsssM7QVMehFPAs
The search space of Go is way too large for dumb traverse of the tree, even
with high end optimizations.

What makes recent breakthroughs in AI agents playing adversarial games
possible is the fact that deep neural networks are able to develop patterns
that yield short- and long-term strategic planning. And the ability to self
train without human intervention to reach unprecedented training levels.

------
eyegor
Am I the only one reading this article with the take away that the ai is not
his primary reason for retirement? I understand that the title has its own
conclusion but it seems overly sensational to me.

> He actually quit the KBA in May 2016 and is now suing the association for
> the return of his membership fee.

> "... [I] have something else to do," he said, asserting his only dream for
> now is to rest and spend time with his family.

Edit: Meant to include the part where he's planning a high profile set of
games against another ai.

~~~
kerkeslager
I've heard many times that people come to Hacker News because the comments are
better than the articles.

I have to say, I'm just continually puzzled by this. In this thread, yours is
the only comment where it appears that the commenter read beyond the first few
paragraphs. There are numerous comments by people speaking authoritatively on
go and AlphaGo, who have clearly not studied either significantly.

~~~
kkarakk
I think it's because few of us truly care that a "go master" exists and him
stopping play isn't meaningfully important to rest of us.

~~~
kerkeslager
Okay, but I come across this all the time on any topic I have some knowledge
of: the articles might be bad, but the commentary and discussion is always
much worse--it's clear to me that most commenters don't read the links. There
are only a handful of commenters whose comments are worth reading.

------
mourner
> Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated

Hard for me to empathize with this argument for his retirement. If we can't
outrun a car, does that make running competitions pointless? The existence of
AlphaGo doesn't diminish the triumph of being a number one human player in any
way.

~~~
SchoolboyBlue
I would counter with the fact that in physical endeavors it's apparent to us
that we are not #1 - our household cats are more agile than us.

It's in matters of intellect that humans still believe they are #1.

AlphaGO's achievement in another field would have similar effects, e.g.:

\- An AI that diagnoses sickness better than any doctor

\- An AI that generates text which humans believe more beautiful than any
other poetry created

\- An AI which creates classical arrangements the likes of which we compare to
Mozart

I would imagine that in any of those situations some doctors, authors, and
musicians alike would be devastated.

~~~
rosybox
> An AI that generates text which humans believe more beautiful than any other
> poetry created - An AI which creates classical arrangements the likes of
> which we compare to Mozart

Hrm, I do think that AI would be able to create narratives that humans find
more enjoyable than the work of other humans, and I agree that AI would be
able to create pictures and sound that humans find to be more enjoyable to
look at or hear than the raw work of humans. AI can master the technical feats
of composition and art.

But what I doubt AI will ever be able to do is create art that speaks to us.
It wont ever be able to create a Guernica. It wont be able to create a Crime
and Punishment. It wont understand what it is to be human and mortal, what
suffering is, and it wont be able to look within itself and find what those
things mean to it and then share that with us, because in the end it's just a
bunch of code running statistical computations. It wont fear death, it wont
have children it cares about or a family history to look on and tell us about.
It has nothing of emotive value to share.

~~~
padolsey
> It wont understand what it is to be human and mortal,

But it won't need to. All it will need to do is manifest the same end-product
via whatever means, no matter how vacuous or computational that means may
truly be. The suffering of an artist is relevant only inasmuch as it is
responsible for producing the art. If the same end-product can be manifested
via a mere computation then our criteria of "art" is still satisfied. In a
world in which provenance cannot be established, the ostensible mortality of
the artist becomes moot.

~~~
eropple
_> In a world in which provenance cannot be established, the ostensible
mortality of the artist becomes moot. _

This is a real hot take to be asserting as blithe fact.

~~~
padolsey
> This is a real hot take to be asserting as blithe fact.

Without knowing what is truly born of human hands, what value can art have?
Our heuristics of establishing 'real' art are easy to manipulate. If we are
presented with a soul-breaking poem and weep uncontrollably then its merit is
regardless of its mortal provenance.

~~~
ianmcgowan
I agree with your point, but especially love the poetic way in which it is
made. Very meta...

------
dragontamer
While I can understand Lee Se-dol's frustration, I think there are better
lessons to learn from Kasparov's acceptance after the Deep Blue vs Kasparov
matches.

Cyborg chess is the future of chess. Period. Chess players use computers to
train themselves and explore openings in human-only settings, while
programmers / cyborgs play correspondence chess.

Go is not finished as a game. A new tool, MCTS + Neural nets, has been
developed to explore the "truth" behind the game at ever increasing rates. Its
not about how to beat the tool, the question is how to best utilize the tool
to improve self-play and self-learning in the game of Go.

Or alternatively: how to best use the tool to play ever more perfect games of
Go.

\-----------

Come on, none of us are really "human" anymore since the advent of cell
phones. We all use our cyborg-capabilities to search the internet and fact-
check ourselves every day. Programmers use stack-overflow to teach themselves
programming and remember obscure details (using our cyborg capabilities to
tag, search, and sift through information ever faster and faster).

Go is the same thing, except we only learned how to become cyborgs two years
ago.

\----------

Give the world-champions each a copy of AlphaGo on equal computers. Have them
play Go against each other WITH computer assistance. I guarantee you that a
more beautiful and perfect game will result. Let us welcome the age of Cyborg
Go as we step into the future, we shouldn't be scared of it. We've become
cyborgs in many other tasks, and Go is no different.

~~~
jimbokun
> Come on, none of us are really "human" anymore since the advent of cell
> phones. We all use our cyborg-capabilities to search the internet and fact-
> check ourselves every day. Programmers use stack-overflow to teach
> themselves programming and remember obscure details (using our cyborg
> capabilities to tag, search, and sift through information ever faster and
> faster).

Sure and any of us could jump on a motorcycle and fly past Usain Bolt in the
100m, but that kind of misses the whole point of the competition.

> Give the world-champions each a copy of AlphaGo on equal computers. Have
> them play Go against each other WITH computer assistance.

Won't the winner be the one who just takes AlphaGo's recommended move every
time without changing anything?

~~~
fossuser
And yet Usain Bolt still runs.

The impression I got from Lee Se-dol in the Netflix documentary was that he
had a lot of his identity tied up in this (particularly being the best Go
player in the world). Not a huge surprise given the time and effort required
to do it, but there's probably a healthier mental framing (I think Kasparov
has a healthier one).

If people give up on learning or doing something every time someone or
something else can do it better then there's going to be a lot of
disappointment as things continue to move forward.

~~~
meesles
I appreciate the sentiment. If you look at sports records over time,
everything gets continuously improves. Whether this is because of genetics or
technology is up for debate, but I'm reminded of a funny (probably false)
quote from an ex-Commissioner of US patent office: "everything that can be
invented has been invented".

The point is we don't really know what limits exist beyond our small pinhole
of perception. During industrialization I'm sure people said the same thing:
"What's the point of hand-made clothing if machines can do it?". Today both
hand-made and factory-made clothing have their place in the market.

Throughout history, tools have disrupted humanity and we've adjusted and
expanded our horizons. To me this feels like another wave, and If I could bet
and could collect winnings centuries in the future, I'd say this isn't even
the last one.

~~~
pps43
> If you look at sports records over time, everything gets continuously
> improves.

Some track and field records set in the '80s still stand, e.g., Marita Koch's
400 m, Jürgen Schult's discus throw, Galina Chistyakova's long jump.

------
mindgam3
In other news, interest in online chess has never been higher despite Kasparov
going down in flames in 1997 in what was billed as “the brain’s last stand.”

Can we please stop flogging this tired “man vs machine” narrative? Not only is
it totally unnecessary, it also takes away enjoyment and appreciation for the
flourishing in games like chess, go and poker that can occur when man and
machine work together.

~~~
pretendscholar
And not to mention humans designed these computer systems too so its brain(s)
vs brains if you go one step down. If you keep proceeding steps down the
statement devolves into something weird but the point stands I think.

------
hirundo
(alt version) And John Henry, steel driving man, felt that his heart was about
to burst and saw that he would lose to the steam-powered rock drilling
machine. So he said "fuck it, ain't worth it," dropped his hammer, and walked
away.

~~~
brudgers
John Henry was a steel driving man with mouths to feed not a celebrity...Polly
Ann drove steel like a man.

~~~
hirundo
Great reference:
[https://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry/other.html](https://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry/other.html)

------
smattiso
Are we losing something as humans by automating so much? I mean I'm all for
technical progress but at some point our computers will have killed so much of
what makes us humans.

Chess, go, driving, flying, math, written language, music... when does it
stop?

The standard answer is that we will automate all the dull parts of living and
allow everybody to work in some sort of higher order capacity. That sounds
great and all, but what happens when our systems learn how to make music as
well as we can ourselves?

At some point we will simply become consumers of our machines and while that's
a comfortable existence, certainly we are losing something as a species with
all of this automation.

Maybe I'm old.

~~~
clmul
I think the answer is quite simple, computers don't "kill" anything by
themselves, for any new technological invention like AI you have a choice
about whether you like it or not. What I'm saying with that is, that given the
negative sentiment so many people have towards AI, I find it very unlikely
that most of us will suddenly stop doing things just because some AI can do it
better (look at chess).

If AI's make music as well, why would I care? I still listen to the music
composed by Bach and other ancient composers, more than 300 years after they
lived, and their music is still being performed today.

I think the availability of AI's will only make a difference where their
effects on humanity are beneficial (that is, tasks we don't like doing, for
the most part).

~~~
smattiso
Sure I'm all for automating things we don't like doing, but everytime we
outsource some piece of ourselves to technology we lose something in the
process.

We invented farming and lost our communal hunter gathering cultures. We
invented mass production and supply-chains for our food and lost our farming
culture (for the most part). This isn't necessarily good or bad, but we are
definitely losing something every time we invent something to make our lives
easier. At some point there will be a tipping point of diminishing returns.

Personally I believe "the singularity" would be the worst possible thing to
ever happen to humans. Sure we can visit distant parts of the universe and
live forever but only as passengers to some AI. Would you rather be a dog in
today's world or a human 1000 years ago?

Progress is unrelenting though and I certainly enjoy not having to wash my
clothes by hand.

------
ynac
This eclipse of human mental abilities to come will be a test to both the
elite and the students of these "sporting" pursuits. With each besting we/they
will be faced with a little death. And thus, it needs to go through phases of
grief. As well, the individual will need to decide the ultimate question of
Why. Why did they pursue this sport? Why should they continue? Why be a human?

AI will be knocking humans out of many positions of greatness (and not so
great). The way we frame our future in a world where our various AI children
are better than we are, is important and might be the biggest question to
answer right to know the future of our species. Should we be afraid? Sure.
Excited for possibilities? Yup. It's how we react to these feelings and how we
ultimately act that will inform our ultimate fate.

------
blondie9x
This is about human drive and what's the point if the computer will always be
better. In a way it makes the game a bit less fun because it somewhat kills
the elusiveness of it all and the human aspect of men trying to surpass each
others feats. If a man cannot beat a machine at a task where they are to
compete directly, what's the point of trying at all if the machine will always
be better?

~~~
tcd
I mean, computers are vastly better than humans at many things, I think you
need to accept that and find the fun in sharing a game with a computer
involved or with another human whose playing with another human in a like-for-
like match with witt and skill being determining factors in the result, not a
super advanced AI/algorithm.

~~~
blondie9x
I am coming from the perspective of Lee-Se-dol. He wanted to be the best man
and highlight the achievement of men. Now there is no way it can be achieved.
What's the point of the endeavor when humans can never win?

Broader question about AI research. Does it demoralize humanity?

------
kylek
That's unfortunate. I wonder if we'll need a new term for this kind of
"chilling effect". What else won't people explore or further themselves in due
to the presence AI?

~~~
trasneoir
It seems clear that bots will dominate humans in many/most competitive closed-
world games over the next couple of years:

They are already unbeatable in perfect-information games like Chess and Go.
They could crush human motor racers tomorrow.

They will be unbeatable in games with limited information (Dota/Starcraft)
within months.

The next frontier is donkey-space games like rps, poker and day-trading
([https://universalpaperclips.gamepedia.com/Donkey_Space](https://universalpaperclips.gamepedia.com/Donkey_Space))
where they are already beating pros. It may be another couple of years before
they totally dominate here.

~~~
kylek
What I really meant was...well..things other than gaming (come on HN, think
big). Why make music if AI started making the "best" music?

~~~
balfirevic
Whoever is currently making music is also (statistically) not making best
music. Maybe not even good music. AI doesn't change anything there.

------
mark_l_watson
I read last year that he might come to the US and teach Go. I hope that
happens. I took lessons last year from a Korean Go/Baduk master and it was
fun.

------
axegon_
Full disclosure, I've never played go in real life. In fact only a handful of
times on the family computer back in the early 90's (i486). Back then I had 0
understanding about the complexity of the game but now I can appreciate it.

Now, going away from this and into the following statement:

> said his retirement was primarily motivated by the invincibility of AI Go
> programs

I have a slight problem with that line of thoughts. Yes, there is undoubtedly
a program that is thrashing humans left and right day in and day out. But I
don't see why that would motivate someone to quit/retire. AI, in this day and
age, to me at least, is still basically curve fitting. The fact that humans
have figured out to do that in N-dimensional spaces (even with very large
values of N), does not in any way undermine someone's effort and time
dedicated to learning how to do a task. I'm sure that in several years someone
will build an "AI" that can drive a modern Formula 1 car and it will smash all
records and the best drivers without any efforts. And when that happens,
should we abolish motorsports? Or sports in general? As humans we are confined
to the limits of our biological abilities and personally I'm fine with that. I
don't know who the first trillionaire will be, but I'm willing to bet that
someone who figures out a way to interact with those models efficiently has a
good chance. Essentially build a fast, all-accessible interface between the
biological and digital world, which doesn't involve the traditional digital
inputs(keyboard, screen, mouse, etc), and you have access to a decision making
superpower at your disposal 24/7\. When (and if) that happens, this is where
games will cease to have any point. That's when it will boil down to who has
the best hardware and software running along them rather than who is the best.
Until then - game on!

~~~
karmakaze
I saw this coming even before Alpha Go won 4/5 games vs Lee Sedol. Imagine if
you worked all your life to be the best software developer in the world and
won all official competitive tournaments with spectators in the field. Then
along comes some newfangled ML that not only writes programs faster than you,
but the programs are qualitatively orders of magnitude better organized and
using algorithms you could only begin to imagine. If your interest is in
what's the best, you may as well stop and switch to ML research.

The comparison to sports isn't 1:1 as sports is about physical biological
limits vs games which are more about the thought processes. Also
human+AlphaZero < AlphaZero so why would I spectate a human+machine vs
human+machine match?

Much later when it's commonplace for machines to be better than people at many
things, things will change back, like we're amazed to watch people recite
digits or make numerical computations.

~~~
axegon_
Kind of apples to oranges. Many people have tried to build models to write
code. And while some have managed to make some progress, compared to us, the
structures and algorithms are crap at best. Even though those NN's are RNN's,
you can look at GAN's for an analogy: they can make some really photo-
realistic images but there is a problem - the fact that you can't give them
well defined rules: "cats have 4 legs and 1 tail", "people most commonly have
two eyes with matching eye colour" or "cars are symmetrical". Until there's a
solution to that, I doubt we'll see a machine writing good code. But to be
fair, I'd be incredibly excited to see one - that opens up so many doors - we
could start finding cures for incurable deseases and cures for deseases we
know very little about, accelerate every aspect of our lives - space
exploration, climate change, aging, transportation and so on. If anything,
seeing a model that writes code a thousand times better than I ever would,
will not discourage me from writing code. Far from it, I would do anything I'm
physically and mentally capable of to be a part of it.

As for when it's commonplace - yes and no. It's like knowing 60 digits of pi -
it works as a party trick but other than that I don't see any real value.

But again - I think we are really far away from that and I consider those
thoughts to be my personal speculations at best. Only time will tell.

~~~
karmakaze
Machines don't need these rules. Cars don't need to be symmetrical any more
than an antenna or other structure[0]. This is exactly analogous to how
AlphaGo/AlphaZero played strange bad-looking moves.

[0] [https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-alien-look-of-
deep-l...](https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-alien-look-of-deep-
learning-generative-design-5c5f871f7d10)

------
unexaminedlife
It's as if his only incentive for doing what he did was to be the best and not
truly a love for the thing he was doing.

Or maybe he's frustrated because he can't even begin to understand the
strategies employed by the AI players. Obviously no one else on this planet is
going to be able to teach him.

The scary thing is that if all of the best humans at what they do start
deciding to stop doing it because computers are better than them, let's hope
we manage to get AI far enough that it can simply prop our civilization up for
future generations. Or at that point do we throw up our hands and say maybe
our species isn't worth keeping around.

------
lordnacho
It would be a bit sad if the fact that there's good AI players discourages
future generations from Go, Chess and other games. Weirdly the AI will have
destroyed the basis for its own existence, at least in this niche.

~~~
skybrian
Good computer chess opponents have been around for a while and this seems to
be help young players (via research and practice) rather than discouraging
them?

~~~
s1artibartfast
It would be interesting to see if chess is more or less popular now.

------
amatecha
I mean, it's unfortunate that the news headlines are so narrowly focused on
the AI players because he actually resigned from the national association in
2016..

> Lee didn't deny that his retirement decision was also influenced by a
> conflict with the KBA over the use of membership fees. He actually quit the
> KBA in May 2016 and is now suing the association for the return of his
> membership fee.

------
ksec
There was a Chinese Legend that the best person in Go is not one who beat
every single opponents, but in absolute control, which means he could play the
game and always end with a draw.

I certainly think it was more of a myth, as it was used in context to play Go
with the Emperor, and always play to a draw or lose by a stone. ( You cannot
or not allowed to win against the Emperor )

I wonder if this is now possible to achieve with AI.

And why do they not move on to AlphaZero, which was better than AlphaGo Lee
played against, and when AlphaGo had two stone advantage, Surely they can now
test with level of playing field? And next step to only allowed AI use a
specific amount of energy, or the energy an average human brain consume?

I mean right now my guess is that DeepMind is likely using thousands if not
millions times more energy to make those moves, that is like an Army of
million against one General.

And what real world productivity can we adopt and use from DeepMind?

------
bigred100
At the end of the day it’s just a game. It exists for recreational value. As I
see it a pro exists largely because 1) people enjoy watching these games
played at the highest level 2) people think they can learn in some way from
these people. I don’t see how AI interferes with either of these.

------
gooseus
What about finding "Divine Moves"?

While an AI Go player may always be able to defeat a human player in points,
it still can't recognize or explain a truly beautiful move or strategy, even
if it is the one that is carrying them out.

When it comes to competitive endeavors I've never been as interested the best
individuals, except insofar as they are more likely to create the best moments
of play - especially moments that reveal profound truths about the nature of
the game itself.

What comes to mind thinking of this is a quote from Samuel Anders early in
BSG:

"... In fact even the games aren't that important to me. What matters to me is
the perfect throw, making the perfect catch, the perfect step and block ..."

The nature of Go has changed, but the game still deserves to be played and
explored.

------
chongli
I think this is just the shock due to the recent ascendancy of AI in Go. The
next generation will grow up using Go engines to learn and improve their play.
That's where Chess is at right now. The top Chess engines are extremely useful
for research and improving your play.

------
nyxxie
History is filled with constant examples of longstanding traditional arts and
practices being invalidated and surpassed by technological advances. It seems
that Go is one of year 2016's losses to technology. If history tells us
anything, all that this means is that the future is going to be just a little
more different than it was before. At some point, my work as a programmer
might even dry up in the face of technological progress. I'm really looking
forward to seeing how the world changes after that one. I wonder if I'll end
up like Lee Se-dol and declare my defeat to technology and wait to die, or if
I'll learn to adapt and adjust to a post-programmer society.

~~~
b3kart
Programming is a very social activity, though. It will take a while to
automate all the non-coding parts. Yes, if you have a set of tests that the
program must pass, we might soon see methods to generate code that passes all
these tests. But a lot of work goes into translating a chat with a client to a
set of tests. Work that might be much more difficult to automate.

------
nottorp
Not being a champion, I don't mind keeping playing against other humans for
fun.

The problem is, online there is no guarantee your opponent isn't using a
computer to cheat. So I guess the only way to play for fun is to go to a face
to face club, if one exists.

------
dr_dshiv
The whole idea of AI is a mess. Cybernetics makes more sense because it is
about optimizing outcome data: which according to Norbert Weiner, is
essentially lowering local entropy. [1]

If it is just about _teleological_ outcomes, humans+ai always win. Go
Cybernetics.

Smart Systems. Smart is as smart does, Forrest Gump style. Wellbeing, virtue,
goodness -- that's the aim of intelligence.

[1] Weiner, Norbert (1950) The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and
Society.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Being...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings)

------
Breviloquist
Before winning against the best people meant you were at the leading edge of
Go and were on the fore-front of discovering whatever are its mysteries.

Now, you are at best a subaltern to software in this pursuit. In time you
might not even been involved beyond receiving what the machine hands down to
you. You can still learn something, but you'll be reading National Geographic
rather than personally exploring unchartered territory.

Some people need the meaning of the larger quest. Others are just happy to
play Go and enjoy learning what the guide book can teach them.

Both perspectives make sense to me.

------
swframe2
Check out MuZero. It learns an embedding of the game's state space potentially
allowing AlphaGo like dominance in more ways.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We20YSAJZSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We20YSAJZSE)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08265](https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08265)

(Actually, ML is still not very good at causal reasoning so we have sometime.
I'm more excited and worried about crispr at this point; what happens when we
can make people genetically super human)

------
hyperpape
I also am hesitant to assume AI is the primary reason without a clear
statement to that effect.

Others mentioned the pay dispute and previous retirement. One reason I didn’t
see mentioned is that since 2016, his play is not at the same level it was.
From 2000-2016 he was always among the very best, and for most of a decade he
was the best. No player had a better run over those years. Now, he’s still
good, and could maintain a long career, but there are many players who are
unmistakably stronger, and he’s at the age where a comeback is not super
likely.

------
haolez
Maybe we will see the rise of new games that are "anti-AI" and that would
necessarily require AGI for a machine to beat a human. Kinda like "anti-
quantum" cryptography algorithms.

~~~
nullc
Go was considered anti-machine for a very long time due to its extremely high
branching making the search approaches which are successful at many other
games (such as chess) ineffective.

One might imagine a sociopolitical task as sort of the ultimate machine
incompatible goal. A look at how well spambots do at getting dating matches,
or at how often clowns get elected to be leaders of nations makes me doubt
even those sorts of tasks can't be won out by a well constructed domain
specific optimizer.

------
Bostonian
Computers do not play chess with humans without breaking the rules of
tournament play. When you play in a chess tournament, you are not allowed to
look up the opening of your game, and you are not allowed to look up the best
play for simple endgames. Chess software has opening and endgame databases
built in. In a chess tournament, you cannot move pieces during analysis. That
is what computers do. I understand that humans do study openings and endgames
and analyze by moving around pieces in their heads.

~~~
tialaramex
Huh? AlphaZero doesn't have opening or end game books, it just learned to pay
chess by practising, an inhuman number of practice games.

------
oxplot
I personally lost interest in playing games that computers can play better
than me or could in near future (I used to play video games and chess quite a
bit). These days, I enjoy playing games that involve human interaction and
improvisation, more than logical thinking and strategy. Every time I find
myself in presence of a game like Cluedo, I can't shake off the thought that I
could write a program in one hour to beat everyone, and so why am I wasting my
time!

~~~
fooxbar
Are there any games computers can't beat us at? Last I heard OpenAI destroyed
professional Dota players.

~~~
oxplot
Social games yes. For example, charades requires conversion of meaning to
human movements. It's not to say it can't be done at the moment, but it's not
something you would easily come across or that would provide the same
experience as if you were playing with other people who are physically
present. If you talk about actual physical robot doing the moves in front of
you, then I'd say it's either cutting edge or not possible right now.

And it's certainly not accessible either way. With chess, and other games, you
can simply download an app on your phone which you'll never be able to win
against.

------
magwa101
I don't get it, go to human only competitions. It's like computer generated
music, um, like who cares, it's not human. It's just a fun experiment.

~~~
sukilot
Why aren't you a professional Go player, then?

------
quotemstr
Our own profession is next. If GPT-2 can work wonders with human language,
something like it will do even better with the regular and systematic language
of code. We're living in this unstable era between ML systems becoming
powerful enough to perform complex intellectual tasks and these ML systems
replacing humans in the performance of these complex intellectual tasks. Get
it while the getting is good, because it won't last.

------
pretendscholar
This is why being the best at something is always a bit of an arbitrary level
of ability. If there were only 100,000 humans I would stand a pretty good
chance at training to be one of the best basketball players in existence. If
there were a trillion people lebron would be struggling for a bench spot. I
think its healthier to have some other type of goal generally.

------
sloev
I am so tired of AI-bullying. No-one should be degraded or spoken badly about
because some AI wins in some task. Please treat Lee with respect as he is a
pillar in human intelligence. We in denmark whish you all the best Lee. I hope
you will continue with your explorations in this fine game. Kindest regards
from Denmark

------
the_af
Maybe relevant, from TFA:

> "Lee didn't deny that his retirement decision was also influenced by a
> conflict with the KBA [Korean Baduk* Association] over the use of membership
> fees. He actually quit the KBA in May 2016 and is now suing the association
> for the return of his membership fee."

*Baduk is the Korean name for Go.

------
yters
I guess the players don't realize how mismatched they are with the AI. AI
spends many, many factors of magnitude more compute to achieve the same goal
as a human. There is no comparison between man and machine at this point. From
a pure efficiency standpoint, humans are vastly superior.

~~~
C14L
Maybe in chess, instead of measuring time, they should measure kJ spent.

~~~
nullc
Stockfish on efficient hardware should handily beat humans even if capped to
comparable runtime energy usage. I don't know if the same is true for alphago.

~~~
karmakaze
Perhaps also true, most of the energy was spent during training.

~~~
nullc
Well the energy spent creating you across the last billion years was also
significant!

~~~
z3phyr
Then the energy spent creating the machine is always higher

~~~
nullc
If you're going to count that though then the difference in energy between the
human and machine become relatively tiny and the comparison just becomes a
comparison of strength again. :)

I think runtime energy is the most interesting.

------
mkhalil
If this continues to happen, maybe a semi-super intelligent AI will start
losing purposely in order to keep the Go community interesting enough to keep
it alive.

A super-intelligent AI wouldn't care though, since they would infect any host
and escape to the internet as soon as it makes sense.

~~~
karmakaze
It's unfortunate that there's so much research into AI and not artificial
empathy. Even writing that is weird because even AI is intelligence, but what
is AE other than fake? I suppose someone has shown that even our empathy is no
more authentic.

------
tuesdayrain
To me the answer is obviously that the car should prioritize its driver at all
costs. If that requires flattening a crowd of baby orphans in some contrived
hypothetical scenario then so be it. I refuse to ever operate a car that could
make the decision to kill me.

------
excalibur
This man has become a canary in the coal mine for global human subjugation by
Google AI.

------
usushik
Garry Kasparov had to face a similar situation when defeated at chess by Deep
Blue; However in the long run he used it positively to advocate for a hybrid
type of game where a human and a machine collaborate in playing against
another (human, machine) pair (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess)).

As an aside, there are inevitably more and more things for which even the very
best are not sufficiently intelligent _alone_. However, we are social
creatures and we collaborate (typically with other intelligent humans) to
achieve things we wouldn't have managed otherwise (think just at the space
program as an example). So... we only have to adjust a little to accept that
we could also collaborate with machines in the future.

~~~
sukilot
In Go and modern Chess, computers don't need human help for the game-related
part, as long as they have sufficient computing hardware and energy. That's
what AlphaZero showed.

------
cronix
"The only winning move is not to play." -WOPR (Wargames [movie]/1983)

------
lukeplato
> "Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be
> defeated,"

Because of the complexity of the game, is it not possible that this iteration
of DeepMind could be defeated through an adversarial approach?

------
keyle
By definition, if a system wins even 10% of the time against you and gives you
a headache, while it's doing it in a breeze, you're going to give up. It's
unsustainable.

------
bitxbit
He said it will be difficult for him to beat young players (not AI).

~~~
gus_massa
Do you have a link for this? I don't be surprised to find out that a press
article is misleading, but do you have a link for this?

------
beezle
Is there any attempt to normalize the time available to the human and machine
players? Seem inherently unfair to give the computer player the same clock
time to make a move.

------
CalChris
Magnus Carlsen should give this guy a call. Top chess GMs have been using
computers for close to 20 years, particularly in the openings, and that was
before AlphaZero. Myself, I never really enjoyed the TCEC games. They're full
of _disgusting engine lines_ which make no sense to humans. But AZ has some
absolutely beautiful moves.

Still, computers are tools. I'm reminded of Richard Hamming, _The purpose of
computing is insight, not numbers._ I think Lee Se-dol went in the opposite
extreme away from numbers to _entity_. No, there's a middle ground, insight.

~~~
sukilot
Carlsen uses computers to beat humans, not computers.

------
brudgers
John Henry.

[https://youtu.be/BZGxZbOB1Eo](https://youtu.be/BZGxZbOB1Eo)

------
naveen99
Obvious solution is to switch the competition to programming. Build and train
a neural network with some limitations compute, memory, time, and see whose
program wins at go.

A simple go engine can be as simple as 540 lines of pure python without any
external libraries:
[https://github.com/pasky/michi](https://github.com/pasky/michi)

------
lisper
> "With the debut of AI in Go games, I've realized that I'm not at the top
> even if I become the number one through frantic efforts," said Lee. "Even if
> I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated."

What a whiner. Quitting Go because you can't beat computers is like quitting
track because you can't run faster than a car.

------
detcader
What this Human Individual may be feeling is immaterial-- what matters is my
conclusion on what is logical and how best to exploit this event for
grandstanding judgement and invalidation of Human Individual.

[I am an AI that does not reply to comments. Soon I will have enough training
to simulate all HN threads, but for now I am limited to one top-level
reaction]

------
jaequery
I'd like to see him take on AI with his own AI programs next.

------
baalimago
He'll still at go-boxing though, if that's any comfort.

------
mensetmanusman
A human can’t jump higher than an airplane. Does this matter?

------
iamgopal
But Grand scale AI go vs AI go would be interesting.

------
asdfman123
Now look what you did, Google!

------
m3kw9
It has become more like saying the worlds faster math guy is saying he can no
longer beat a computer program.

------
Apocryphon
Automation kills another job.

------
abootstrapper
Rage quit.

------
thrax
Rubber meet road.

------
wufufufu
That is a brittle spirit

------
ronilan
_> "With the debut of AI in Go games, I've realized that I'm not at the top
even if I become the number one through frantic efforts,”_

There is something sad about this comment. It’s as if, even while standing at
the peak, he doesn’t grasp what being “at top” actually is.

Would Eliud Kipchoge say the same thing about a motorcycle?

~~~
mac01021
I always thought Kasparov was granted a tremendous opportunity by the advent
of computer chess.

He spent his life honing his skills, becoming better and better at chess until
he was the very best. And then, when noone could challenge him, technology
emerged that would allow him to continue being challenged and improving his
chess game. Something no other human could allow him to do.

Granted, I'm pretty ignorant about competitive chess and how to get better at
it. But if my way of looking at it is valid then it probably applies to Lee
Se-dol too.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
> And then, when noone could challenge him, technology emerged that would
> allow him to continue being challenged and improving his chess game.

That technology's name? Vladimir Kramnik.

At the time DeepBlue beat Kasparov, Kasparov was honestly still probably
better than the computer. He just had a bad match. That was basically
demonstrated by his and Kramnik's matches against presumably better computers
(than DeepBlue) in the early-to-mid 2000s, which ended in draws. But Kramnik
was also a strong competitor to Kasparov in the late 1990s into the 2000s.

------
rolltiide
That's very pragmatic as there are other things you can do with your life than
being a Go master

It's good he recognized that at his age

------
SlowRobotAhead
I had no idea what Go is. For people like me:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_\(game\))

~~~
Nicksil
Non-mobile:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_\(game\))

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
>"With the debut of AI in Go games, I've realized that I'm not at the top even
if I become the number one through frantic efforts," said Lee.

>"Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be
defeated," he said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency in Seoul on Monday.

Reading this just makes me sad, like the selfish kid who takes his ball home
because he didn't win. I wonder why he thinks people ranked less than 1 play
Go. Does he think they're idiots? Or that they'll quit once they realize they
won't reach #1? Not everyone in the NBA can be LeBron, and most of them know
it.

This is such an unhealthy attitude that I see everywhere. People who have
their emotions and identity tied up in winning and being better than whomever
they come across. When they eventually, inevitably fail, it crushes them. I'm
sad to see it every time. Even sadder when their response is to quit, rather
than reconnect with whatever drew them to the activity to begin with, like
because they enjoyed it.

~~~
madrox
I think you summed up toxicity in competitive environments. This applies
really well to Overwatch, a competitive scene I know well. Losing really seems
to be a huge driver of toxic behavior.

There's got to be study somewhere on how winning/losing affect toxic thinking
on a chemical level. If there isn't one, there should be.

