China Censored Google's AlphaGo Match Against World's Best Go Player (theguardian.com)

DeepMind's board game-playing AI, AlphaGo, may well have won its first game against the Go world number one, Ke Jie, from China -- but most Chinese viewers could not watch the match live. From a report: The Chinese government had issued a censorship notice to broadcasters and online publishers, warning them against livestreaming Tuesday's game, according to China Digital Times, a site that regularly posts such notices in the name of transparency. "Regarding the go match between Ke Jie and AlphaGo, no website, without exception, may carry a livestream," the notice read. "If one has been announced in advance, please immediately withdraw it." The ban did not just cover video footage: outlets were banned from covering the match live in any way, including text commentary, social media, or push notifications. It appears the government was concerned that 19-year-old Ke, who lost the first of three scheduled games by a razor-thin half-point margin, might have suffered a more damaging defeat that would hurt the national pride of a state which holds Go close to its heart.

Comments

China needs to go

[kuzb]

Sorry. you guys just made that way too easy!

Re:China needs to go

[cm5oom]

Go is the Japanese name of the game, the Chinese name is weiqi. So you should say China needs to weiqi.

Re:China needs to go

[MightyMartian]

Indeed. China is one of the oldest contiguous civilizations on the planet, and yet it acts like some sort of second-rate banana republic that just gained independence a few years ago. Does it really matter if a computer can beat a strategy game champion? We all know it's coming, that eventually computers are going to be able to beat the masters of any game.

Re:China needs to go

[ma1wrbu5tr]

I guess Beijing didn't want any weiqileaks?

Re:China needs to go

[MiniMike]

Actually archeologists and historians attribute the longevity of the Chinese culture to their early building skills, especially bridges and fences. While mostly known for great walls and fantastic bridges, the early culture especially relished their fence building technology. This started, they theorize, about 6000 years ago when an unknown builder in what would become central China one day went out to a field on his farm, and with primitive tools created the same fence pieces we still use today. Proudly pounding the initial piece into the ground, he stood back and declared: "First post!"

Re:China needs to go

[tsqr]

With such an elaborate setup for the pun-chline, how did this get modded Interesting instead of Funny?

Citizen, turn yourself in...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to your local Party HQ for sentencing. You are required to provide your own bullet.

The margin is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

MCTS programs don't care about the winning margin. It was quite clear that Ke Jie was behind, but AlphaGo just didn't take unnecessary risk to win by a large margin.

Lighten up, Francis.

[geekmux]

"...that would hurt the national pride of a state which holds Go close to its heart."

Perhaps we should remind the country that we're talking about a game here.

Hell, Kasparov lost to Deep Blue 20 years ago. The concept of a world champion being defeated by a computer playing a game ain't exactly new.

Re:Lighten up, Francis.

[mccalli]

It's China. They often delay live broadcasts to prevent anything hitting the screen if, say, a Human Rights protester suddenly invades the area and starts waving flags about Tiananmen Square. They often do this with news outlets and interviews of their politicians, for instance.

The delaying of the game's broadcast may have nothing to do with the game itself, and everything to do with the fact it is an international platform for China.

Re:Lighten up, Francis.

[wbr1]

Most live events in the US are delayed too. So censors can bleep curse words and other anti-puritanical content.

Ah, censorship

[Weaselmancer]

Because if you didn't see it, it didn't happen.

Where can I stream them?

[The Raven]

I'm trying to find where to watch an English stream, but all I'm finding is news about China's censorship. That's great, but it's affecting me by proxy because I can't find somewhere that's going to stream it here!

The second match is at 0330 UTC on Thursday (late evening today, Wednesday, in the US)... where will it be broadcast?

In the wake of "free speech" commencement address

[rs1n]

I find it interesting that just a few days ago there was an uproar with respect to the Univ. of Maryland commencement speech by a Chinese student (studying abroad here in the US) on freedom of speech. There was a huge backlash from China. And now this...

Re:A much more crushing defeat ...

[markus]

AlphaGo keeps track of both the score and of the statistical likelihood that it'll win the game. Being able to constantly evaluate these two values with high accuracy is actually a big competitive advantage. As the score doesn't really matter, it is entirely by design that during the end-game, AlphaGo deliberately sacrifices score points in order to gain a stronger position and increase the likelihood of an overall win.

In some way, winning with a minimal score demonstrates better control of the game than winning with an arbitrary and larger score. That just means you needlessly took risks that you didn't have to.

Re:A much more crushing defeat ...

[mbkennel]

> What if the AlphaGo AI is so advanced, that it is toying with its opponent, and letting him near-win? What if it has the strength of "the Hulk" with the subtlety of Black Widow?

The algorithm is neither. As discussed frequently, it pursues the highest probability path to a win, not the highest winning margin. This means taking less risks when apparently ahead, which may look like "letting him near win" and "toying with him", by giving up small amounts of territory as long as those preclude lines of action by the opponent which would potentially open up more. In US football, consider giving up run yards in 4th quarter to preclude passing touchdowns.

There is no programming regarding an opponent's predicted emotional states.

"lost by a razor thin margin"

[LetterRip]

AlphaGo doesn't try and maximize its win margin. It would have won by 15 points or more if the winning margin mattered.

When all paths lead to victory there is numerical instability in the rollouts so a move that gives a 15 point win margin, might, by chance get say 99.995% chance of winning, but one of the billions of other paths that also lead to a win will, by chance - give a rollout of 99.996% chance of winning. So every move in a won game is essentially random and will tend to reduce the win margin against a skilled opponent (who will always make a move that decreases their loss margin) until the win margin is 1/2.