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Google's AlphaGo AI Defeats the World's Best Human Go Player (engadget.com)
It isn't looking good for humanity. Google's AI AlphaGo on Tuesday defeated Ke Jie, the world's number one Go player, in the first game of a three-part match. The new win comes a year after AlphaGo beat Korean legend Lee Se-dol 4-1 in one of the most potent demonstrations of the power of AI to date. Adding insult to the injury, AlphaGo scored the victory over humanity's best candidate in China, the place where the abstract and intuitive board game was born. Engadget adds: After the match, Google's DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained that this was how AlphaGo was programmed: to maximise its winning chances, rather than the winning margin. This latest iteration of the AI player, nicknamed Master, apparently uses 10 times less computational power than its predecessor that beat Lee Sedol, working from a single PC connected to Google's cloud server. [...] The AI player picked up a 10-15 point lead early on, which limited the possibilities for Jie to respond. Jie was occasionally winning during the flow of the match, but AlphaGo would soon reclaim the lead, ensuring that his human opponent had limited options to win as the game progressed.
It isn't looking good for humanity.
Purpose built machines have been able to, or be used to out do humans for a very long time. A lever can be used to lift more weight than a person alone can. But we're not being ruled by sticks. Cranes can lift even more.
Cars are used to move people further and faster than they could on their own. Computers can do many more calculations per second. These things make life better for humanity as a whole.
Unless AlphaGo figures out a way to keep a person from unplugging it, I'm guessing that humanity will be just fine.
I'll be impressed when a computer wins Hungry Hippos, that game is obviously rigged towards anyone younger than 7. My kid beats me in it all the time.
Sent from my TARDIS