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I mean, that's like asking whether marathon runners have a future now that we've got cars. Exercising one's brain/having pleasure through the game could be an e
by chenglou 11y ago
I mean, that's like asking whether marathon runners have a future now that we've got cars. Exercising one's brain/having pleasure through the game could be an end in itself, and is independent of how machines perform.
- nothis 11y agoI like that analogy a lot! It's not like "playing Go really well" ever solved any real-world problem, it has always been a competition among humans. What should change, there?
- ng12 11y agoI feel like the author completely misunderstood why AlphaGo is exciting. It's about advancements in technology and soft AI, Go has almost nothing to do with it.
- mquander 11y agoMaybe that's why AlphaGo is exciting to you. I don't give a shit about technology and AI compared to how much I want to watch AlphaGo play more games of Go, and I suppose that professionals probably feel the same way.
- nothis 11y agoWell, we're on hackernews, we like the tech stuff. For most of the world, this news is where people learn about Go and the human player's "humiliation" (whether or not the Go community sees it that way) is the story. I'd argue, though, that this is merely a proof of deep learning being able to solve "hard" problems. There's headlines everywhere about deep learning solving previously "impossible" image recognition problems, for example. Fields that are much more interesting and relevant in their real-world impact. AlphaGo, in comparison, seems like a PR/pet project. It mostly exists to play Go really well. It's a sub-branch of uses of the technology, not a start.
- hkmurakami 11y ago>Well, we're on hackernews, we like the tech stuff. For most of the world, this news is where people learn about Go and the human player's "humiliation" (whether or not the Go community sees it that way) is the story. In that regard, Lee Sedol has done the game of Go a great service by being so gracious in defeat (and for once, the media headlines actually mirror his humility and maturity). That has actually been my lasting impression from the match.
- make3 11y agowe're slowly moving towards anticipation in continuous strategy games, and life. progressively better decisions/anticipation in progressively much much larger decision space is how this is relevant
- pilingual 11y agoIf you like it a lot, let's make sure we credit Michael Redmond who said it last night during the Go match: https://youtu.be/qUAmTYHEyM8?t=3713 https://youtu.be/qUAmTYHEyM8?t=3713
- ProAm 11y agoNo one will ever collect $200 dollars again
- threatofrain 11y agoDoes that mean that marathon runners will no longer be in regular use in industry, and be relegated to special events justified in part by aesthetics, and also by audience spectacle? Likewise, if machines can do quality accounting, does that mean that accounts will be relegated to special accounting events, just like there are marathon events, where people come for aesthetic enjoyment or audience spectacle?
- nothis 11y agoIMO the analogy is correct for Go players as that's mostly a "sport". There's real cases of similar technology putting people out of jobs, for example I recently read that more and more finance firms more or less completely automate a lot of processes, even those where you'd traditionally would have counted on people's "gut feelings". Deep learning is eerily good at simulating "gut feelings".
- afarrell 11y agoYea, the technology to make marathon-distance couriers obsolete has existed since...before the Scythians?
- geofft 11y agoThere are certainly mathematics competitions, where humans (usually high-school or college-age students) participate and cheer on other humans who are artificially restricted from the use of a calculator. And these competitions are considered useful because the skills required to do well on them are very valuable in certain industries, even if the artificial restriction on calculators is removed. In fact, some of the companies that most aggressively hire people who perform well at these competitions are also well-known for automating accounting tasks that were done by humans until recently, such as determining the expected price of a stock.
- thetruthseeker1 11y agoOr in the 1990s in the age of DeepBlue (IBM super computer), do young chess prodigies of countries that formed the former USSR have a future?
- melling 11y agoRead the first paragraph. Sounds like the students in the story are forgoing most other learning to be great Go players. There's a big difference in their level of dedication. Does Go still remain as exciting of a sport?
- hkmurakami 11y agoIf Chess is any indicator, the ebb and flow of popularity of such games are more dependent on the persona and narratives of their champions and championship matches rather than any existence of a machine superior in skill to its human counterparts.s
- zouhair 11y agoMan it would have been great to live at the time of horse races.
- kogus 11y agoThat's a better statement of my own version, which has been: Now that we have bulldozers and cranes, is there any point to getting physically stronger?
- conanbatt 11y agoTake it from someone that walked the path of becoming a professional Go player, being a professional and an amateur are completely different attitudes towards the game. Tic Tac Toe is solved, but can be fun to play when you are a kid. Amateur Go playing can still exist, but the goal of strength is more instilled in the path to pro-ship. This really suggests that going the path of being the strongest is no longer sensical. Why would a human try to be the best calculator in the world, knowing it will never beat any calculator ever? Just to prove itself to other human caculator wannabes? Senseless. This is a real paradigm shift and we still need to understand what to do. But obliviously ignore AlphaGo is akin should be unfathomable for a professional aspiring player. As a professional, the first question to ask is what will AlphaGo bring to Go Theory. We still dont know how much stronger it is than Lee Sedol (or how far it is from "God"). Pushing it to its limits will show us insights we havent found yet and we will update ourselves as players to the most current theory. The second step is answering the following question: Can human + AlphaGo beat Alpha Go? A human potentiated with AlphaGo's reading power can intuitively pick variations that would give it an edge? If so, we have found that Go still harbors a human secret that is jsut overly compensated by reading. The last step would be, even if human participation gives negligible results, can human + Alpha Go create better games than Alpha Go?
- yannyu 11y agoAnything that Go has to go through as a result of AlphaGo, Chess has already gone through with Stockfish and its predecessors (such as Deep Blue, though I realize it's not exactly the same). Is there a particular reason why a chess computer would be any more undefeatable than a Go computer? Even though Kasparov lost, Nakamura destroyed Rybka 10 years later. Now that we have a competitive Go AI, isn't it likely the game of Go will shift and be even more competitive since now more players can get world-class practice and suggestions on their own?
- conanbatt 11y agoIf I understand AlphaGo correctly, I don't think that any human in the future will be able to beat the AlphaGo today. AlphaGo didn't beat Lee Sedol because it played new and marvelous moves we need to understand. It played better because it knew the exact consequences of the options it was presented, and could calculate it and make better decisions than human intuition. No human can develop that reading power, and its not reasonable to think a human in the future will have intuition that beats the calculation of AlphaGo. Since reading, the core ability of Go can now be completely replaced by a computer, the question is what others decisions can a player make. Can he make strategic decisions better than AlphaGo? Can intuition still best AlphaGo calculating capacity? Eventually, we can think that we will have computational power to actually solve Go, and if there is any sense at all to play Go after that, its about finding those beautiful games, from beginning to end, that provoke emotions and turn Go purely into art.
- kercker 11y ago>"I mean, that's like asking whether marathon runners have a future now that we've got cars." I don't think they are the same things. Marathon is about the physical limit of human beings, while Go is about mental limit. Before there are cars, or trains, we all know we are not the fastest in the world. A rabbit can easily overrun an adult human. However, we never thought that a dog or a bird will beat us in a game like GO. Thinking a machine beating the human champion in the game of GO, is like admitting that we are intelligently inferior to machines.
- sytelus 11y agoIt's worth noting that human brain consuming barely 20 watts of power is competing against giant computing infrastructure gobbling up perhaps few 100 killowatts. It's like one player against the army of 5000 players. Many people write off this energy requirements as non-consequential but the fact is that our major technological bottleneck of 21st century is nothing BUT energy consumption. When we have machine that consumes 20 watts and does everything that human brain does, it would be a day for a new species.
- teh 11y agoI read somewhere that a single machine still wins 25% against alpha Go. That's still 500 W VS 20 W but a bit closer.