South Korea Commits $863 Million To AI Research After AlphaGo 'Shock' (nature.com)

schwit1 writes: In reaction to the recent Go victory by a computer program over a human, the government of South Korea has quickly accelerated its plans to back research into the field of artificial intelligence with a commitment of $863 million and the establishment of [a] public/private institute. According to Nature.com, "It is not immediately clear whether the cash represents new funding, or had been previously allocated to AI efforts. But it does include the founding of a high-profile, public-private research center with participation from several Korean conglomerates, including Samsung, LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor, as well as the technology firm Naver, based near Seoul. The timing of the announcement indicates the impact [AlphaGo has on South Korea], which two days earlier wrapped up a 4-1 victory over grandmaster Lee Sedol in an exhibition match in Seoul. The feat was hailed as a milestone for AI research. But it also shocked the Korean public, stoking widespread concern over the capabilities of AI, as well as a spate of newspaper headlines worrying that South Korea was falling behind in a crucial growth industry. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has also announced the formation of a council that will provide recommendations to overhaul the nation's research and development process to enhance productivity. In her [March 17] speech, she emphasized that "artificial intelligence can be a blessing for human society" and called it "the fourth industrial revolution." She added, "Above all, Korean society is ironically lucky, that thanks to the 'AlphaGo shock,' we have learned the importance of AI before it is too late."' Not surprisingly, some academics are complaining that the money is going to [the] industry rather than the universities. Will this crony capitalistic approach produce any real development, or will it instead end up [being] a pork-laden jobs program for South Korean politicians?

Comments

Where To Go From Here?

[mentil]

I recall 20 years ago when Deep Blue won against Kasparov, people said that an AI would never be able to brute-force Go well enough to beat a human master. It may not have used only brute-force techniques, but AlphaGo surely did win. I expect that arrangements are being made for the AI to face off against the #1 world Go champion (Sedol was #3 IIRC) and it may even take some tweaking for it to triumph. However this raises the question: where do we move the goalposts to next? What does AI have to accomplish to change how we fundamentally think of it, and consider it as 'real AI'?

Many people have an AI assistant (ok a text-to-speech shortcut to a semantic search engine) in their pocket, and will soon be entrusting their lives daily to autonomous cars. Anyone else feeling like the singularity is coming?

Re:Where To Go From Here?

[thrich81]

How many people can write songs, stories, or poems which meet human standards for quality and originality? Machines can now do all three, poorly, which makes them just as good at those tasks as the majority of humanity.
To be honest, I plagiarized this answer. In the movie "I, Robot" (which the Slashdotariat hates, but was not bad), the robot lead was confronted with just that question by a human. The exact exchange is,
"Detective Del Spooner: Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
Sonny (the robot): Can *you*?"

Re:Whoa! Not so fast.

[MichaelSmith]

If South Korea are worried, it can't be because they didn't build a machine for playing Go before the Americans.

Don't you get it? AI IS the endgame.

[Etherwalk]

The first organization to successfully develop advanced general artificial intelligence trained toward its goals and towards preventing the development of other AI wins. It just wins.

We can try to beat it, but we're the ant colony trying to stop the man from building a new house. He can outthink us at every turn.