This is a good point. While Alpha Zero etc. are much stronger than humans, they may have weak areas. Actually we know one: ladders.
Ladder is a fundamental technique that is easy for humans but hard for both monte carlo and neural network static analysis. It is plausible that an equally strong but more ladder-aware player would have very different tactics from the current best computer players.
The original AlphaGo actually had a hand-crafted ladder feature input layer. It was removed in Alpha Zero. We know from Leela Zero and ELF Go game records that they don’t understand ladders very well, so likely Alpha Zero didn’t understand them either.
Actually if anyone here follows current go bot development, I would like to know if they currently have some specific ladder features to address this weakness?
Ladder is a fundamental technique that is easy for humans but hard for both monte carlo and neural network static analysis. It is plausible that an equally strong but more ladder-aware player would have very different tactics from the current best computer players.
The original AlphaGo actually had a hand-crafted ladder feature input layer. It was removed in Alpha Zero. We know from Leela Zero and ELF Go game records that they don’t understand ladders very well, so likely Alpha Zero didn’t understand them either.