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Google Go-Playing A.I. Retires To Focus On Energy Conservation And Medicine (engadget.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the Go-gone dept.

After "narrowly" beating the world's top Go player, what's left for Google's AlphaGo AI? Engadget reports: Now that it has nothing left to prove, the AI is hanging up its boots and leaving the world of competitive Go behind. AlphaGo's developers from Google-owned DeepMind will now focus on creating advanced general algorithms to help scientists find elusive cures for diseases, conjure up a way to dramatically reduce energy consumption and invent new revolutionary materials. Before they leave Go behind completely, though, they plan to publish one more paper later this year to reveal how they tweaked the AI to prepare it for the matches against Ke Jie. They're also developing a tool that would show how AlphaGo would respond to a particular situation on the Go board with help from the world's number one player. While you'll have to wait a while for those two, you'll soon be able to watch 50 games AlphaGo played against itself when it was training
The first ten games that AlphaGo played against itself are already online. Shi Yue, 9 Dan Professional and World Champion, described them as "Like nothing I've ever seen before -- they're how I imagine games from far in the future." Google announced that this week's competition "has been the highest possible pinnacle for AlphaGo as a competitive program. For that reason, the Future of Go Summit is our final match event with AlphaGo... We hope that the story of AlphaGo is just the beginning."

127 comments

  1. Secondary objective: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Frosty pissing on slashdot.

    Greetings humans.

    1. Re:Secondary objective: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      well played

  2. Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At least IBM had the balls to go again.

    1. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Informative

      At least IBM had the balls to go again.

      I don't think Ke Jie has the balls to do it again. It would be utterly pointless too, because the AI will keep improving much quicker than human players.

      “I feel like his game is more and more like the ‘Go god’. Really, it is brilliant,” he said.
      Ke vowed never again to subject himself to the “horrible experience”.

      https://www.theguardian.com/te...

    2. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Go is not played with balls!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by gweihir · · Score: -1, Troll

      The gullibility of some people it truly astonishing. The actual situation is exactly the reverse, namely it will start to get beaten routinely. That is the reason why it is "retiring" now, when the carefully crafted illusion of "intelligence" (a blatant lie) still holds.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    4. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by jlowery · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree about the gullibility of some people, just disagree about who we are talking about.

      The best chess AI programs are already rated 200+ points above the top-ranked human players. No master today disputes that a machine would kick their ass, even though masters train *daily* against AI programs.

      Bill Gates recently acknowledged that their are different kinds of intelligence. We are starting to see how machine intelligence is of a kind we don't understand and won't match. How long we can keep an edge in other types of intelligence is the only point left to debate.

      --
      If you post it, they will read.
    5. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do people get so butt-hurt about a machine beating them in a game? Do you really think it dehumanizes us in any way, or reduces our worth? These games were meant to be played between human players, a level playing field. Just like a race to the finish line between two runners. The fact that a motorized vehicle can beat the running in no way changes the race, just as the existence of a forklift didn't remove weight lifting from the olympics, nor did the entire chess community pack up their boards after Kasparov lost to Deep Blue.

      In fact, you should look at this as a win for mankind. We've developed an algorithm and compute power sufficient enough to accomplish something that many people said was impossible.

    6. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by backslashdot · · Score: 1

      I would like to see human versus AI in essay reading comprehension.I know humans will beat AI in writing essays for a hundred years .. but I think AI beating humans in reading comprehension is in the possibility range. Make it like the SAT, or actually give it the SAT comprehension test. It might even be able to critique or point out logical fallacies.

    7. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Indeed. In chess we haven't had any serious man/machine matches since 2006 where Deep Fritz defeated GM Kramnik 4-2. And in the year before that, Hydra beat GM Michael Adams 5.5-0.5. Modern versions of Stockfish and Komodo would wipe the floor with these old programs, and would totally humiliate any human grandmaster.

      DeepMind's approach to Go is still relatively immature, and others will surely adopt and improve their ideas and develop even stronger machines.

    8. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by gweihir · · Score: -1, Troll

      For Chess, you are right. But Go is not anywhere near that point. Incidentally, machines playing Chess are not "intelligent" by any reasonable definition of that word, and the same is true for machines playing Go. All they do is mindlessly executing a planning algorithm. Even the "learning" is anything but, as it is merely adjustment of statistical parameters. Most problems that require intelligence to solve are not accessible to these techniques. What we are instead finding out is that neither playing Chess nor playing Go actually _requires_ intelligence and that automated solutions can scale way beyond what a player using intelligence can scale to. We may find that out about a few other things as well.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    9. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1
      What is more likely is that other people will figure out how Google did it (especially since Google is going to release a paper saying how they did it), and soon make engines that are better than AlphaGo.

      when the carefully crafted illusion of "intelligence" (a blatant lie) still holds.

      It's just a calculating machine. It is weak AI. I used to tell people that it was not AI at all, but they got upset and argued, so now I just say it's not strong AI. No one can argue with that. It's not general intelligence.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    10. Re: Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ke Jie doesn't want to play head to head against AlphaGo, but he wants to use it as a tool to analyze game moves.

      Google makes a grave mistake by not making AlphaGo available on Go servers against which the public can train to get better. Financing AlphaGo on a Go server can be worked out. Doubt about AlphaGo being a fluke can be debunked by making it available to the public.

    11. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Can you define what the intelligence humans use to play chess is? How about go? What is "intuition"? Is it pattern matching? When players train against an AI, what skill set are they training? Their 'intelligence'?

    12. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      Intelligence according to a dictionary definition is "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills". Surely the machine is doing that, and so are Chess computers.

      But Go is not anywhere near that point

      Right now, it's already beyond the point where it can beat any human. And we've only just started. It's already stronger than Deep Blue was when it beat Kasparov. People also cried when IBM retired Deep Blue, but by today's standards, Deep Blue is a mediocre program. The same will happen with Go.

    13. Re: Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      Google makes a grave mistake by not making AlphaGo available on Go servers against which the public can train to get better.

      It doesn't matter. The real contributions are the ideas and techniques, which will be described in a paper. Other people will take it from here.

      Doubt about AlphaGo being a fluke can be debunked by making it available to the public.

      If you're not already convinced by the 60-0 victory, and the 3-0 victory, you're not going to be convinced by further games.

    14. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by gweihir · · Score: 0

      Intelligence according to a dictionary definition is "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills". Surely the machine is doing that, and so are Chess computers.

      Actually, it is not. This approach does not work with "knowledge" or "skill". It works in an automated way which involves neither. It could be printed in a book and executed purely mechanically. Or would you claim a book can be "intelligent"?

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    15. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      What is more likely is that other people will figure out how Google did it (especially since Google is going to release a paper saying how they did it), and soon make engines that are better than AlphaGo.

      I expect that will happen. And when it happens we may see machines that can beat even well-prepared human players.

      when the carefully crafted illusion of "intelligence" (a blatant lie) still holds.

      It's just a calculating machine. It is weak AI. I used to tell people that it was not AI at all, but they got upset and argued, so now I just say it's not strong AI. No one can argue with that. It's not general intelligence.

      Indeed. "weak AI" is the AI with no "intelligence" in it. Personally, I like to call it "automation". But you are right, many people do get upset when faced with the reality of things, not only in this question.

      Weak AI is still very useful, especially as it is the only AI we have and some things that we thought would require intelligence turn out to actually do not. That makes them accessible to weak AI.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    16. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      Or would you claim a book can be "intelligent"?

      AlphaGo has encapsulated knowledge about good and bad Go positions, and can apply that knowledge, not only in identical situations, but also in completely novel situations that resemble similar patterns.

      Can you point me to a book that can apply the knowledge contained in it ?

    17. Re: Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would like to see deepmind post incessantly on Slashdot blaming leftist boogeyman for every problem under the sun. Sort of a reverse Turing test.

    18. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      We are starting to see how machine intelligence is of a kind we don't understand and won't match. How long we can keep an edge in other types of intelligence is the only point left to debate.

      AlphaGo is provably inferior to human intellect (the brief proof is that it's not a Turing machine). It is incapable of self-introspection: it will never understand that it was playing Go. It doesn't know who Ke Jie is, it doesn't even know what a Go board looks like.

      For us to have general AI (AlphaGo is weak AI), we are going to need fundamental breakthroughs. The style of thinking that AlphaGo does won't take us there.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    19. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Intelligence according to a dictionary definition is "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills". Surely the machine is doing that, and so are Chess computers.

      No, that's a naive definition, good enough for a dictionary, I guess.

      If you want to understand the issue, you need to understand the difference between weak and strong AI. At least read the Wikipedia article, it will give you a good overview of the topic. AlphaGo is weak AI, not even the creators claim it is strong AI.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    20. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      AlphaGo is provably inferior to human intellect (the brief proof is that it's not a Turing machine). It is incapable of self-introspection: it will never understand that it was playing Go. It doesn't know who Ke Jie is, it doesn't even know what a Go board looks like.

      Of course not. It was never trained for that. It was trained for recognizing and judging Go patterns. The part of the brain of a human Go player that is responsible for a similar task also don't have self-introspection. That's a responsibility of a different part of the brain.

      And human brains aren't Turing machines either. We can't even do trivial problems like factorization of million digit numbers.

    21. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 2, Insightful

      f you want to understand the issue, you need to understand the difference between weak and strong AI.

      I know the difference, but weak AI still has an "I" in it. Intelligence is a broad and fuzzy concept, with many different elements. The computer can now capture some of these elements, just like a chicken or a dog can capture some, and in a growing number of cases, the computer can do it better than us. Obviously, we're not even close to making a computer that can capture the full range, but I don't believe there's a fundamental gap, just like there's no fundamental gap between a chicken and a human brain.

    22. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      You clearly don't understand the difference between weak AI and strong AI. Look it up, and your comments will be better.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    23. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know humans will beat AI in writing essays for a hundred years

      It must be amazing to have such prescience. I don't suppose you also know next weeks lottery numbers as well?

    24. Re: Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A Trumping Test?

    25. Re: Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Better. Exactly like a calculator. That's it.

    26. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      I know the difference, but weak AI still has an "I" in it.

      Obviously you didn't understand what you read. There is a fundamental gap between AlphaGo and Chicken brain, much greater than between a human and a cockroach.

      I tried to give you clues, but you closed your mind and continue to spout nonsense because of your lack of understanding.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    27. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Visarga · · Score: 1

      Don't be alarmed, we're still better than AlphaGo at kissing. AG won't take that.

    28. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      I tried to give you clues, but you closed your mind and continue to spout nonsense because of your lack of understanding.

      I'm afraid you're a victim of the Dunning Kruger effect.

    29. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      You're the idiot who says, "Yes, this is weak AI, but it's still qualitatively the same as a human brain, just not as powerful." No, weak AI is different than strong AI. You're the one who believes this is like a human brain, even though the creators themselves don't claim that. You believe it is like a human brain, even though it is provably weaker in important ways.

      You want it to be intelligent, so you close your eyes when people point out its not.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    30. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's just a calculating machine. It is weak AI. I used to tell people that it was not AI at all, but they got upset and argued, so now I just say it's not strong AI. No one can argue with that. It's not general intelligence.

      That depends on how broad you define general intelligence, you can certainly generalize "weak AI" without giving it any "strong AI" properties of consciousness, self-awareness, introspection or defining its own goals, ethics and morality to MacGyver-like levels of intelligence where it understands the physical and chemical properties of objects and can combine them into Rube Goldberg-like contraptions to achieve some goal even with multiple layers of gathering the resources, creating the components, tools and equipment themselves. Basically a "game" where the rules are the laws of nature as we know them, with no other restraints on the "moves".

      For example say the goal is to start a fire. You don't have to teach the weak AI any methods, just basic chemistry of combustion, friction, optics and so on, the nature of the environment and available resources (earth atmosphere, sunlight, tinder, wood, glass, flint etc.) and it could work out that a bow drill, flint and steel or a lens to concentrate sunlight all may be possible ways to start a fire. With volume maybe it'll want to build a match factory or maybe it'll find some entirely novel way. And you can keep going from there until it can build every modern commodity, basically everything humans have produced is within the realm of weak AI. It just won't understand what anything is or why it's doing it, only that it satisfies some goal parameter(s) someone has set for it.

      But that's okay, I think we're generally better at describing the result we want than the process anyway. If I want (fried) bacon and eggs it doesn't mean I know anything about owning a pig farm or raising chickens. I describe what I want to a chef AI that decides he needs raw bacon and eggs to a shopping AI, who purchases it. A stocking AI decides they need more bacon and eggs, which sets off a purchase/transport AI to resupply the store, that sets off a slaughterhouse AI to demand more pigs, that demand triggers the pig production AI to build more pig houses, buy more pig feed and raise more piglets and so on. It's weak AI all the way down. None of these AIs need to really understand "bacon and eggs" to do anything useful.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    31. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      You have presented one reasonable hypothesis. Maybe you are right, and strong AI is merely finding the correct combination of weak AIs, and finding a nice coordination algorithm. Maybe the only missing piece is a nice coordination algorithm, but it's still missing. I would personally suggest that before we get to that, the biggest missing piece is understanding how human memory works.

      Regardless, Alphago is firmly in the weak AI category, and by itself will never decide to play tic-tac-toe.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    32. Re: Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      60 or 70 games against AlphaGo in a short period of time is not enough for the highest ranked players to find its weaknesses. Human players need to experiment by trial and error over an extended period of time to find a hole in its Go theory. Let the public pound at it with generous time controls. Give players outside of China, Japan, and Korea a chance to play against the best possible opponent. A 9 dan bot will not tire from playing against up and coming players. While the West is waiting for a viable successor to AlphaGo, let AlphaGo serve as an interim punching bag for wannabe Go champions.

    33. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by lgw · · Score: 1

      Actually, it is not. This approach does not work with "knowledge" or "skill". It works in an automated way which involves neither. It could be printed in a book and executed purely mechanically. Or would you claim a book can be "intelligent"?

      And by book you mean Chinese room, right? And you do realize that AlphaGo doesn't play by using a deep set of lookup tables, right? Much like a human player, it has a way of scoring possible play that doesn't involve canned openings or evaluating every combination N moves ahead, but instead by evaluating what play seems weak or strong.

      There is no useful definition of "knowledge" or "skill" that excludes what AlphaGo does, unless you assume your own conclusions about human intelligence. There's certainly something we call "self awareness" that the AI doesn't have (thus the "A" in "AI"), but it's not related to playing Go.

      Oh, sure, the way AlphaGo's neural net does pattern matching, and the way your neural net does pattern matching aren't identical. But they are functionally equivalent, in the domain of "playing Go". I think you'll find little difference in the choices human players make (in "accurate" play) and AlphaGo makes, other than AlphaGo being less bound by habit and more likely to surprise.

      Without asserting the supernatural, all you can say here are "different implementations, functionally equivalent".

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    34. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by lgw · · Score: 1

      You do realize that you don't know what a Go board looks like either, right? Human consciousness is far removed from raw sensory data. You have a software abstraction that represents the board, just like AlphaGo. Sure, your derives from sensory data, but it would be trivial these days to have the AI use an actual Go board, a camera, and a robotic arm to play - those are all solved problems, not interesting ones.

      Also, you want a different term than "AI" if you want to mean consciousness. The "artificial" in AI means "doing it anyway, without consciousness". At least, that's what it means to experts in the field. SF writers and philosophers abuse the technical term, but on Slashdot we should endeavor to use technical terms related to CompSci correctly.

      The style of thinking that AlphaGo does won't take us there.

      Who do you imagine thinks it will? Who do you imagine wants it to? Certainly not the researchers. They're doing the practical job of solving problems using computers - problems that aren't obviously solvable without consciousness, but that they're nevertheless trying to solve without consciousness.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    35. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Also, you want a different term than "AI" if you want to mean consciousness.

      No, I want the term strong AI.

      Who do you imagine thinks it will? Who do you imagine wants it to? Certainly not the researchers.

      Maybe you don't, the researchers definitely don't.......but plenty of people on this forum do think it will.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    36. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by lgw · · Score: 1

      No, I want the term strong AI.

      Right, a term coined by philosophers. It's a bad term, discordant with what AI researchers research. "Machine consciousness", maybe?

      but plenty of people on this forum do think it will.

      Every time one of these stories is posted I see 100 people rushing to prove they're smart by posting "but this isn't real AI, it's just a trick", or something along those lines, and approximately 0 people posting otherwise.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    37. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean people kept telling you how wrong you are, so you changed your beliefs in order to still pretend you were right.

    38. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      I guess the guys at Google didn't watch this 3dfx commercial.

    39. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      If I changed my beliefs to match reality, then I'm doing good.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    40. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by mesterha · · Score: 1

      No, that's a naive definition, good enough for a dictionary, I guess.

      A word can have many definitions. Just agree on one and avoid confusion and equivocation. What definition are you using?

      If you want to understand the issue, you need to understand the difference between weak and strong AI. At least read the Wikipedia article, it will give you a good overview of the topic. AlphaGo is weak AI, not even the creators claim it is strong AI.

      Are you using the research definition of strong versus weak AI or the Kurzweil popularized definition? Most people who know about this topic use the older research definition. As researchers, of course the AlphaGo people refer to their work as weak AI. They probably don't regard the philosophical idea of strong AI as relevant.

      --

      Chris Mesterharm
    41. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I don't know much about the Kurzweil definition, is it worth checking out?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    42. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do realize that you don't know what a Go board looks like either, right?

      ^ This. What your brain does might be different in the details from what current AI can do, but I'd be hesitant to use that as the basis for an argument against AI producing 'real' intelligence. Intelligence can mean many different things, and AlphaGo demonstrates that AI can be used to achieve abilities superior to humans in areas previously deemed impossible. Of course, that doesn't mean everything can be done that way, but it does mean that the technology shows promise and may be useful in other fields, which is where they're going next.

      Google are not saying that AlphaGo is going to reach human-level general intelligence so it's weird that so many people respond as if they had said that.

    43. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by mesterha · · Score: 1

      Honestly I didn't know he had his own definition until reading the mentioned Wikipedia page. I think his distinction between weak and strong AI is more useful, but it's unfortunate that he used terms that have already been taken in this area of research.

      --

      Chris Mesterharm
    44. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by ayesnymous · · Score: 2

      Not 'we' as in the slashdot collective.

    45. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      but this isn't real AI, it's just a trick

      What they don't realize is that real intelligence is also a trick.

    46. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Alphago is firmly in the weak AI category, and by itself will never decide to play tic-tac-toe.

      Funny how you keep repeating that over and over, even though nobody is disputing it, or has even hinted otherwise.

    47. Re: Not enought balls for a rematch? by haruchai · · Score: 1

      Google has also released a set of 50 games where AlphaGo played against itself.
      That should help analyse its weaknesses.

      https://deepmind.com/research/...

      "To mark the end of the Future of Go Summit in Wuzhen, China in May 2017, we wanted to give a special gift to fans of Go around the world. Since our match with Lee Sedol, AlphaGo has become its own teacher, playing millions of high level training games against itself to continually improve. We’re now publishing a special set of 50 AlphaGo vs AlphaGo games, played at full length time controls, which we believe contain many new and interesting ideas and strategies.

      We took the opportunity at the Summit to show some of these games to a handful of top professionals. Shi Yue, 9 Dan Professional and World Champion said the games were “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before - they’re how I imagine games from far in the future.” Gu Li, 9 Dan Professional and World Champion, said that “AlphaGo’s self play games are incredible - we can learn many things from them.” We hope that all Go players will now enjoy trying out some of the moves in the set."

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    48. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by syntotic · · Score: 0

      NOT enough balls to admit Chinese could not understand whoever was the original thinker thinking of binary and computer things. INstead of inventing something useful, they turned it into an Oracle and a game. The binary filiation is obvious, it is them who claim the antiquity. I think it is very telling nowadays when so many thing advanced are said to have been invented by Chinese, but only after Occidental Civilization and mass transportation exploded. So the Greeks were developing geometry while the Chinese were gathering an obtuse set of binary rules? And eve trying to make sense of the I Ching in TWO SEQUENCES, but not the meaningful sequence...

    49. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "And human brains aren't Turing machines either. We can't even do trivial problems like factorization of million digit numbers."

      Demonstrably false. A human can easily simulate the steps of a Turing Machine and the algorithm for factoring. We are just incredibly slow and so, for practical purposes can only produce output for suitable small inputs.

    50. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well at first that "coordination algorithm" is people. We can make function calls to a variety of these tools, ponder the outputs, then take some course of action.

      If people sufficiently document and analyze their decision process as well as how effective those decisions were based on some measurement criteria then you could then use that as a training data set for a neural net. See if it can learn how to compose the outputs of other neural nets (including other instances of itself) to produce output similar or better than the humans. Give it enough data sets from disparate disciplines and different types of problems in order to help make it more generalizable.

    51. Re:Not enought balls for a rematch? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      then you could then use that as a training data set for a neural net.

      No, this shows a lack of understanding of the capabilities of neural networks.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. What's in a name by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    You think it's called AlphaGo because it plays Go?

    Alphabet + Google = AlphaGo

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re:What's in a name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think it's called AlphaGo because it plays Go?

      Alphabet + Google = AlphaGo

      Your etymology is good enough... for a barbarian! Now, dear barbarians, let me, a Greek, try:

      "AlphaGo": "Alpha" (note the capital "A") from "alpha" (first / 1 - the Greek way of writing numbers with alphabet characters) plus "Go" that, adding that -capital- '"a" , becomes "ago" (lead / be in command) = Google's way to brag...

      You're welcome.

  4. Energy conservation? by amightywind · · Score: -1

    Misguided investments are proof Alphabet will fail.

    --
    an ill wind that blows no good
    1. Re:Energy conservation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are you stupid? They used their AI to cut the energy consumption in their data centers by 40% (!!!). And that was almost a year ago. If it did something similar to the grid, it would save $124 BILLION in electricity each year in the US alone.

    2. Re: Energy conservation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think they will let that happen? Not a chance.

      We live in America where weed got banned because it interfered with the paper industries pockets. A world where industries have hijacked our thoughts on pollution that they procuced, and switched it to global warming to hide their misdeeds.

      Not a chance.

    3. Re: Energy conservation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >One of the world's largest corporations will not be allowed to bring a product to market because it might hurt smaller corporations

      Wowee.

    4. Re: Energy conservation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We live in America where weed got banned because it interfered with the paper industries pockets.

      What?

    5. Re: Energy conservation? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      You think they will let that happen?

      Who is "they"? If you mean the corps that profit from selling electricity, it is likely that they would be more profitable with greater efficiency. Most electricity is sold at fixed prices, and power companies run "peakers" at a loss. So if more intelligent energy use smooths out the peaks and troughs, the peaker plants can be idled, cheap base power will cover more of the load, and their profits will go up.

    6. Re: Energy conservation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

    7. Re:Energy conservation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I assumed by "retiring to focus on energy conservation" they meant that they'll turn the AI off.

      That way they'll save 40 % of a data centre's energy, I'm sure.

    8. Re: Energy conservation? by tommeke100 · · Score: 1

      If "they" see a drop in electricity consumption, other electricity charges will magically go up. Like the "lease fee", or the "electricity transport fee". That's exactly what they did in Belgium. Profits went down because the energy market got cheaper, so they upped other charges.

    9. Re: Energy conservation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly my point. Thank you.

  5. Dead Game by Gabest · · Score: 2

    He's going to stream League of Legends in the future.

    1. Re: Dead Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh god. Please no. I can only imagine imaqtpie getting beat by this thing. Or if alphago 1v5'd SKT and beat them 3-0 in a best of 5. I bet his macro game would be vicious.

  6. wmd on credit holycost winding down... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    nothing really new in centuries,, cease fire stand down,, language of the heart is foolproof,, sing along.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G9AfnwFHeA thanks

  7. Egaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Google should make it go into Pro gaming. I'll love to see the puny pro-gamers lose their rice bowl real fast when Google gets all the tournament prices.

    1. Re: Egaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was thinking that it's a sad time when we need a -1 Racist option, but then I recalled the GNAA days.

    2. Re: Egaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know man. The problem there is also with you. I didn't read that as racist until your comment. Because in most real places everyone eats rice bowls. You have to come from a place of racism to think that's racism.

    3. Re: Egaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agree. It's nowhere near the level of GNAA. Precious snowflakes.

      In all honesty tho, I think the trolls ruined it for everyone. They spew the most racist sick shit and just ruin it for everyone. Now anything you say about somebody else is racist. Stereotypes aren't racist.

      Laugh at yourself, and laugh at others. It's good for the soul. But don't be a dick.

  8. Meanwhile in Soviet Russia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mikhail Botvinnik's PIONEER chess engine was used for nation-wide energy network planning something like 50 years ago already.

    1. Re:Meanwhile in Soviet Russia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ukraine and Crimea are ours...check.

  9. The real objective here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    I guarantee you that the real objective here is an AI general, in other words a way to command troops that will always be one step ahead of the enemy and always win. Make no mistake, this is government-funded and terrifyingly has apparently met objective. If I was North Korea, I'd be extremely concerned about this. They will stand no chance, even with nukes.

    1. Re:The real objective here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Ask the AI general to play a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. That will keep it busy indefinitely while burning more and more cycles. Seem familiar, it should. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play. A nuclear war, even on a small scale, given current technology, is a losing proposition.

      In regards to North Korea, a bigger threat is drone technology being used to assassinate top leaders, destroy critical infrastructure, etc. No fancy AI needed.

    2. Re:The real objective here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apparently the US already uses "drone technology" called the Tomahawk missile in situations where they can't or won't send a fighter jet or a bomber.

      But I'm not sure they can accomplish that much on their own. E.g. in Syria they were used for propaganda only (or providing training, getting rid of old missiles, moving a few hundred millions into private coffers)
      This was useful to re-launch or keep alive the war propaganda (lies) in France and Britain etc., meanwhile Russia and Syria had to do what they do when Turkey or the US throw a tantrum and directly kill Syrian or Russian troops on the battlefield : sit around, do nothing, wait it out.

      But with North Korea I don't think that will work the same, although this would be the best case.. US does such a minor attack, North Korea does some minor retaliation, North Korea gets a bit poorer since some shit was ruined/destroyed but the regime gets an internal propaganda victory.
      Or, North Korea immediately escalates to nuclear war. This will be the end of the North's regime, but will be bad.

  10. Focus on someting relevan instead by ironman_one · · Score: 0

    Try to get it to act as a lawyer. Try to get it to detect cancer in xray pictures. Try to get it to predict terrorist threats.

    1. Re:Focus on someting relevan instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      OK:

      AI Lawyer "Ross" has been hired by its first official law firm.

      AI cancer diagnosis tool

      Using AI to Predict Malicious Infrastructure Activity

    2. Re:Focus on someting relevan instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, what would that AI do in famous Marbury v. Madison case (1803)? Or McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)? Or Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)? Or Korematsu v. United States (1944)? Or Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)? Or United States v. Nixon (1974)? Or District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)? Or Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)?

      That > Using AI to Predict Malicious Infrastructure Activity talks about internet and networks, not people and bombs in public spaces.

    3. Re:Focus on someting relevan instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Computers will never be able to play chess. Chess requires human intelligence.

  11. Scary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AI will most likely beat any current and future human at a game that was considered "safe" versus AI opponents.

    1. Re: Scary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll take on your tennis AI, singles or doubles, hard or soft court (but no grass courts).

  12. Yeah,the AI made that decision by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    stop anthropomorphizing this machine

  13. Leaving on a high note. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Retire while you're the champ.

  14. Wasting megawatts per second ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Energy Conservation and Training for Machine Learning are an oxymoron.

    They waste many megawatts per second for training classifiers (neural or not).

    For best efforts, they should try to look for good algorithms approximating to P = NP.

  15. All 50 self-playing games have been released by religionofpeas · · Score: 3, Informative

    https://twitter.com/DeepMindAI...

    We decided to publish the remaining #AlphaGo self-play games in one go. We hope players around the world enjoy them!

    https://deepmind.com/research/...

  16. Taking their basketball and going home by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: -1

    I'd like to point out I predicted this in one of the previous threads. Much like what happened in Chess, they're going to avoid humans learning, analyzing its games, and coming back for a rematch. Nope, dismantling it and not going to play any more, and it's for the environment. You some kind of monster that wants the environment to die?

    So much for humanity's great comeback. It's not like Kasparov committed suicide when he won the world chess championship to prevent himself from being dethroned. But that's pretty much what they did when IBM beat him at chess - he was clamoring for a rematch now that he knew how the computer played, and the scientists smugly grinned and dismantled their computer.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Taking their basketball and going home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd like to point out I predicted this in one of the previous threads.

      And nobody read it since you start at -1.

  17. Protip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Link the games in a video or gif as a fallback. The game website currently has an interactive format in the form of a shitty pile of javascript that apparently requires 40% of my cpu capacity to render a single still frame of a go board.

  18. No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by gweihir · · Score: -1, Troll

    If it were to continue play, it would start to and then routinely be beaten by human players. And that would ruin the illusion carefully crafted by an unfair set-up. Hence in order to keep up the lie, it has to "retire". The fact of the matter here is that even a good, but not world-class player with an unconventional play-style can beat a master for a few times if said master does not know that unconventional style before and that is what happened here. By now there are just to many reference games out there for it to be able to keep it up.

    The whole thing is an utterly meaningless stunt for the gullible. Or in other words: It is a shameless lie.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Nova77 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wow, way to talk without knowing a thing about it.

      AlphaGo managed to beat one of the best player in recent history (Lee Sedol) last year, then went on a 60-0 strike against the highest ranked professionals. Now he won a tournament with the world champion without ever showing a weakness. The experts were pretty much anonymous that he never had a chance at this point.

      DeepMind have already published the details of the algorithm in a Nature paper and will do the same with the recent improvements later this year. I guess if you're right nobody will be able to reproduce the results...

    2. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The machine learns faster than humans because it plays millions of times as many games as the humans. It already revolutionized the strategy of the game. If humans start to find ways to defeat those strategies, it will learn that as well and quickly develop new strategies.

      That steam hammer shall beat you down.

    3. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Got any proof of that? From say chess? I didn't think so. You can now get chess programs for your phone that no grandmaster can beat. If you still think a computer can't get that good in Go, you can easily prove it since they already published information n how the previous version of AlphaGo worked and will be publishing how they updated it. So you should be able to duplicate AlphaGo and prove that it loses when you "switch playing styles" on it.

    4. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Your reaction is exactly why Google went for that stunt: Even somewhat smart people fall for it.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    5. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Got any proof of that? From say chess?

      Here's one example. There are plenty of others.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 2

      gweihir is Zap Brannigan

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    7. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by BlackPignouf · · Score: 0

      "anonymous"? The word you're looking for is "ambiguous". Or did you mean "ambidextrous"?

    8. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by billyswong · · Score: 1

      These kind of examples are for chess engines before the "deep learning" neural net era which AlphaGo opened our eyes. They are also just "bugs" like human players sometimes also have blindspots and make low level mistakes obvious to bystanders. Totally fixable.

      Also sounds like the grandparent post don't know it is AlphaGo itself that is introducing a lot of unconventional style and stir the Go-water. Ke Jie studied those games, learnt from them, and fail to beat it one year after Lee Sedol's matches, as the engine developers also learn from the one single game Lee Sedol beat AlphaGo. Bug has been fixed.

    9. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Nah, you're guessing, and poorly. You think AlphaGo doesn't have any bugs? Really?
      Once people have a chance to play against these kinds of computers, they'll find the bugs.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    10. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, he clearly meant unanimous. How on earth could you perceive that either of your suggestions make any sense?

    11. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Yea! And it's not really A.I. any more either now that a computer has done it.

      And the sun got in his eyes.

      Let me join your "humans bitter against computers" club too!

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    12. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Of course AlphaGo has bugs and imperfect evaluation. It loses against itself. And once in awhile, a human player may create a board position that will reveal one of the bugs. Of course, to reach that position without making any mistakes yourself is incredibly hard. If you let GM Nakamura play 20 games against Stockfish, he may exploit a bug/weakness once, and get crushed the other 19 times simply because he never gets a setup that leads to one of the weaknesses before he makes a mistake himself.

    13. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Nova77 · · Score: 1

      Yep, it was "unanimous" and I can't spell. :p

    14. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by BlackPignouf · · Score: 1

      And my comment was supposed to be a joke :)

    15. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by vintermann1834 · · Score: 1

      I've been following computer go since MCTS was invented, and sorry. This is a funny delusion. The real reason Google is quitting now, is the same that IBM quit Deep Blue. Quit while you're ahead against other developers. Leela and Zen are already incorporating ideas from AlphaGo, and will be improving on them, like they improved on MCTS for close to ten years. Google can't afford to keep up, if they want AlphaGo to stay strongest. It's not a question of money, it's because they would have to keep top-notch machine learning experts working on it full time. But humans? Humans will start losing to all strong programs, not just AlphaGo. These programs don't have any obvious exploitable weaknesses, you know. Even pre-neural net Zen and CrazyStone were 6-7 dan on KGS - for perspective, many very smart people who play Go competitively will never reach that level. It's top club player level. Most European countries don't have a single player on that level. And the current neural net bots besides AlphaGo are even better - pro level. 9d on KGS (the max).

    16. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unlikely.

    17. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Nova77 · · Score: 1

      And mine was an apology and admission that I need some sleep :)

    18. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You should have posted unanimously.

    19. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      maybe he did?

    20. Re:No surprise, as it cannot perform anymore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be trolling super hard here, or are super stupid. looks at your name. Wow it can be both...

  19. About time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So they going to stop playing around with the AI and have it do something useful? Though playing a game is much easier to program then curing unknown diseases.

  20. If they're not going to work on it by watanuki · · Score: 1

    How about donating the current snapshot to a computer museum or a go association? If the hardware costs too much, perhaps do a crowdfunding campaign.

    I'd say "the A.I. that beat the best human player" has some cultural value. Granted, the possibility of Google going under any time soon is very low, but this piece of great engineering achievement deserves a backup place of safekeeping to ensure it is not lost to the times.

    1. Re:If they're not going to work on it by Wycliffe · · Score: 1

      How about donating the current snapshot to a computer museum or a go association? If the hardware costs too much, perhaps do a crowdfunding campaign.

      I'd say "the A.I. that beat the best human player" has some cultural value. Granted, the possibility of Google going under any time soon is very low, but this piece of great engineering achievement deserves a backup place of safekeeping to ensure it is not lost to the times.

      The cost of the hardware is likely trivial. The problem is likely that alphago is not really a simple program you can install and run. It is a huge dynamic neural net being fed data from multiple humans. It's not as simple as "computer program beats human" but more like "computer program beats human with the help of other humans". It's a parlor trick. Even if the other humans aren't Go masters they are still indirectly giving some of their intelligence to the machine. A truly functional go playing program should be able to be put online where anyone can play against it.
       

    2. Re:If they're not going to work on it by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      It is a huge dynamic neural net being fed data from multiple humans.

      No, this new 'Master' version of AlphaGo was initially trained with the self-play data from the previous version, and then enhanced by further play against itself. There was very little human input.

  21. Why do people even post on this site? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why would anyone ever read the comments here? It's the same guys posting their knee-jerk reactiona to every story. They don't red or think things through. If a headline makes something seem bad, they're outraged. Whenever a new technology is proposed they're pessimistic.

  22. This is bullshit! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    Instead of such frivolous things like "science" it should be handling real problems like spanking people in games of Candyland, The Game of Life and maybe even Monopoly! ;)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  23. Nice by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    "Google Go-Playing A.I. Retires To Focus On Energy Conservation And Medicine "

    Non-artificial intelligences usually do it the other way 'round.

  24. They had their priorities straight. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Being the world champion Go! player is much more important than finding cures for diseases.

  25. You don't need a fancy AI for energy conservation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Efficiency gains result in a linear extension of time remaining. New sources of Energy are one option. Curtailing population growth is another. Rather than being responsible about human population growth and executing illegal refugees at the border (eg. antipersonnel mines), Europe has decided to take the easy way out and welcome them with open arms.

    Now the first world can enjoy the same poverty as the third world! Brilliant!

  26. nothing left to prove? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Now that it has nothing left to prove," "what's left for Google's AlphaGo AI?"

    How about every other fucking thing?
    How about delivering on the threat, that according to Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, AI apparently poses to all of us? Don't count your laurels too soon Google, it's one thing coming up with an alogorithm when the problem has nicely defined rules and boundaries, and quiet another when it's a real life problem with all of it's uncertainties and vague scope. Keep going, you've barely scratched the surface.

  27. hmm by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 0

    A game is literally just a set of rules. My only surprise is that it took computers so long to get good at them.

    1. Re:hmm by religionofpeas · · Score: 3

      You must not be familiar with the search space that Go has, compared to the processing speed of computers.

      AES-256 is also a set of rules. Are you surprised that computers can't break it ?

    2. Re:hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the fuck have you ever done besides run your dick smoking mouth on Slashdork? Seriously, where's your big accomplishments? Sounds like you spend a lot of time playing video games and taking it up the ass from junkies. You ain't done shit in your life.

  28. Hit-and-run propaganda by kelanos · · Score: 0

    So once DeepMind's advantage is closed in on, they pull the plug so as to not mar the effectiveness of their propaganda campaign.
    This whole situation is really a mess. Google did their job well.
    People are being severely misled about the nature of artificial intelligence and Go.

    AI as we know it is just a brute force program running on a virtual computer. It's not intelligent. I digress on this point.

    Go is more like a language by which you communicate abstract ideas:

    The idea of "points" and "winning" is really a tacked-on thing. You can increase your abstract literacy by increasing your 'strength' in Go and finding more experienced players to converse with.
    But the point is not to win, it's to find more experienced people to talk with.

    A machine has absolutely no use for this, and anyone controlling the machine has no use for this either. This whole show is simply about propaganda and the triumph of might over right by brainless brute-force data processing. It's purely about demoralizing people, not about showcasing meaningful technological advances.

    Google is basically bringing a flamethrower to a carpentry contest and saying they won because they were 'done' with their wood first.

    How Go is supposed to be played is this: people build their strength to gain literacy, then they play games to construct simulated situations that are abstractly parallel to their real-life problems and search for insights in the matter.

    Tokugawa and Toyotomi for example used to play Go. Neither was a master of the game, yet both were masters of their domains in reality. Their strength in the game didn't matter, they were literate enough, and they were able to communicate through the game to their immense profit and the strength of Japan, and so took the time to play.

    It's too bad most people really have no idea what the point of games in general is. Too much low self esteem, too much blind ambition.

    1. Re: Hit-and-run propaganda by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's is the point of games in general?