4 ms·

I suppose in the era of Bobby Fischer, chess was proxy for superpower one-upmanship. That's long gone, but Chess as a game is still doing fine and I expect that

I suppose in the era of Bobby Fischer, chess was proxy for superpower one-upmanship. That's long gone, but Chess as a game is still doing fine and I expect that it will be the same for Go. We still have chess tournaments, super-star grandmasters and circus freaks (people who can play blindfolded against multiple opponents). And, yes, computers can easily smoke all but elite players. Why should Go be different?

hutzlibu 11y ago
Because it is far more complex. But apparently self learning KI has advanced enough. And yes, chess has lost some reputation. And I guess it will be similar with go. I mean there is a University just for go. But learning something where you know you can become the best, is something different, than learning something knowing computers will be allways better than you ... so I guess they are having a hard time right now ..
- visarga 11y ago
  But the new door is opened with the ability to play stronger than human opponents and discover new strategies.
daveguy 11y ago
And, yes, computers can easily smoke all players. FTFY In chess the top engines are rated hundreds of ELO points above Magnus Carlsen (top human). No top ranked human vs computer match has been publicised in over 5 years because humans are thoroughly trounced. There are cyborg matches which are interesting. Human + Computer vs Human + Computer because gameplay techniques are considered different. Humans still depend more on higher level goal strategy and less on ruthless positional efficiency (which is probably why they get beat midgame). What is mind boggling is that 6 months ago no go engine was scratching the surface of professional level go. It took the engines getting a 4-5 stone handicap to be competitive at the lowest level of professional levels. It looks like this one algorithm has blown through the professional ranks in about 3 months. And a 5-0 victory here would be like 2006 vs 1996 (or even 1993) chess in 3 months.
- ghaff 11y ago
  I guess it's because Go isn't that well known in the West but I find it a bit surprising (though not really) that this isn't getting more press. When Kasparov lost it was news but not really surprising. If it wasn't Kasparov that a computer beat, it would have been the next champion. The writing was on the wall for a long time. It was just a question of when exactly. As for Go, I guess I would never had made a long bet against computers. But as recently as just over a decade ago, computers lost to merely competent players and people working on Go programs were pretty much saying that they didn't even know what the path forward looked like. Things improved a lot with Monte Carlo but even that stalled out. Admittedly, I don't follow this area closely, but these wins pretty much came out of nowhere.
  - JulianMorrison 11y ago
    It's probably due to the relatively recent fact that neural networks stopped being "a 1990s fad" and became a thing again.
  - maaku 11y ago
    Go may not be well known in the west, but it was extremely well known in AI circles. Even before DeepBlue, Go was considered the holy grail of competitive game AI.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Oh, I'm well-aware of that and obviously this is big news on sites like this one. I was mostly remarking that this is pretty low on general news radar screens.
- crispyambulance 11y ago
  I see. What one means by "computer" is always a moving target. Deep Blue was a specially prepared supercomputer from 20 years ago. Apparently, today's top chess software running on a half-decent off-the-shelf machine could crush Deep Blue.
  - 11y ago
lmm 11y ago
I played Chess as a kid. I watched the local tournament shrink from the big town hall, to the side room in the same building, to a local school hall, to a classroom in that school. I really do think the game is dying - perhaps something that was happening already, but Kasparov losing to Deep Blue seemed to really catalyse it. (Not saying this is a bad thing. Evolution in games is natural, and I think it's amazing how much innovation is going on right now (particularly enabled by Kickstarter) - you'd think that board game design would have been worked out decades or centuries ago, but in the same way that incandescent bulb development accelerated massively when competition arrived, it feels like game design has got so much better when forced to compete with computer games. If there are other activities that people find more fun than Chess, that's all to the good)
- luso_brazilian 11y ago
  I don't believe there is a relation between the improvement of computer chess and the reduction in the availability of in-person chess. I also played chess as a kid and the allure of both local and national tournaments was that you could play with a multitude of different players, as opposed to the same 4 or 5 habitual chess players in your family/school/circle of friends. But now, with the internet, at any second you can play with different people from all over the world, different strengths, styles and whatnot. Hence now, instead of looking for the local chess club in the weekends we can play, any time of the day, any day of the week, anywhere. Sites like the excellent lichess [1] are even free (in this case, free both as in beer but also as in speech) and, at any moment there there are 9 thousand, 10 thousand players enjoying this magnificent game. [1] http://en.lichess.org/ http://en.lichess.org/

hutzlibu 11y ago

Because it is far more complex. But apparently self learning KI has advanced enough. And yes, chess has lost some reputation. And I guess it will be similar with go. I mean there is a University just for go. But learning something where you know you can become the best, is something different, than learning something knowing computers will be allways better than you ... so I guess they are having a hard time right now ..

visarga 11y ago
But the new door is opened with the ability to play stronger than human opponents and discover new strategies.

daveguy 11y ago

And, yes, computers can easily smoke all players. FTFY In chess the top engines are rated hundreds of ELO points above Magnus Carlsen (top human). No top ranked human vs computer match has been publicised in over 5 years because humans are thoroughly trounced. There are cyborg matches which are interesting. Human + Computer vs Human + Computer because gameplay techniques are considered different. Humans still depend more on higher level goal strategy and less on ruthless positional efficiency (which is probably why they get beat midgame). What is mind boggling is that 6 months ago no go engine was scratching the surface of professional level go. It took the engines getting a 4-5 stone handicap to be competitive at the lowest level of professional levels. It looks like this one algorithm has blown through the professional ranks in about 3 months. And a 5-0 victory here would be like 2006 vs 1996 (or even 1993) chess in 3 months.

ghaff 11y ago
I guess it's because Go isn't that well known in the West but I find it a bit surprising (though not really) that this isn't getting more press. When Kasparov lost it was news but not really surprising. If it wasn't Kasparov that a computer beat, it would have been the next champion. The writing was on the wall for a long time. It was just a question of when exactly. As for Go, I guess I would never had made a long bet against computers. But as recently as just over a decade ago, computers lost to merely competent players and people working on Go programs were pretty much saying that they didn't even know what the path forward looked like. Things improved a lot with Monte Carlo but even that stalled out. Admittedly, I don't follow this area closely, but these wins pretty much came out of nowhere.
- JulianMorrison 11y ago
  It's probably due to the relatively recent fact that neural networks stopped being "a 1990s fad" and became a thing again.
- maaku 11y ago
  Go may not be well known in the west, but it was extremely well known in AI circles. Even before DeepBlue, Go was considered the holy grail of competitive game AI.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Oh, I'm well-aware of that and obviously this is big news on sites like this one. I was mostly remarking that this is pretty low on general news radar screens.
crispyambulance 11y ago
I see. What one means by "computer" is always a moving target. Deep Blue was a specially prepared supercomputer from 20 years ago. Apparently, today's top chess software running on a half-decent off-the-shelf machine could crush Deep Blue.
- 11y ago

lmm 11y ago

I played Chess as a kid. I watched the local tournament shrink from the big town hall, to the side room in the same building, to a local school hall, to a classroom in that school. I really do think the game is dying - perhaps something that was happening already, but Kasparov losing to Deep Blue seemed to really catalyse it. (Not saying this is a bad thing. Evolution in games is natural, and I think it's amazing how much innovation is going on right now (particularly enabled by Kickstarter) - you'd think that board game design would have been worked out decades or centuries ago, but in the same way that incandescent bulb development accelerated massively when competition arrived, it feels like game design has got so much better when forced to compete with computer games. If there are other activities that people find more fun than Chess, that's all to the good)

luso_brazilian 11y ago
I don't believe there is a relation between the improvement of computer chess and the reduction in the availability of in-person chess. I also played chess as a kid and the allure of both local and national tournaments was that you could play with a multitude of different players, as opposed to the same 4 or 5 habitual chess players in your family/school/circle of friends. But now, with the internet, at any second you can play with different people from all over the world, different strengths, styles and whatnot. Hence now, instead of looking for the local chess club in the weekends we can play, any time of the day, any day of the week, anywhere. Sites like the excellent lichess [1] are even free (in this case, free both as in beer but also as in speech) and, at any moment there there are 9 thousand, 10 thousand players enjoying this magnificent game. [1] http://en.lichess.org/ http://en.lichess.org/