6 ms·

This game's start is already fantastic. Ke Jie already played an adaptative tactic the bot, that is playing in a very solid and stylish game. It almost feels l

This game's start is already fantastic. Ke Jie already played an adaptative tactic the bot, that is playing in a very solid and stylish game. It almost feels like a teaching game so far. As a former student of Lee Sedol and once aspiring professional Go player, i'd answer a few questions if you have any!

rw 9y ago
A) How would you characterize the differences and similarities between AlphaGo and the best human players? B) How has human play style changed since AlphaGo's introduction? C) What is the answer to the question you most want to be asked?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  > How would you characterize the differences and similarities between AlphaGo and the best human players? The alphago that played Lee Sedol was still very machine-like. But the master series online felt like strong superiority. It started playing some novel moves that being at least reasonable, would make it harder to play against. In a way, it was like the radical new kid with new ideas that shakes up the foundations. So far in this game (move 40~0) i read calmness from white ,a calculated calmness. As if it knew that it would win. Note: in Go, you perceive a lot of feelings from your opponent, as the moves selected express a state of mind or emotion. AlphaGo is getting hard to distinguish from human beings. > How has human play style changed since AlphaGo's introduction? Hard to say, but alphago is definitely changing the fields of study. Professional go really is like brute-forcing the game. A professinoal chooses to go through an unstudied path because he thinks its superior, and then another professional tries to ravage that path. That adversity over professional games is what advances theory. In this game, black playing 3-3 (bottom right corner invasion) would have never been played before AlphaGo in the state of human theory. I was taught 15 years ago in my first beginner class how bad doing that is. > What is the answer to the question you most want to be asked? I guess that the most important question is what is the future of Go. Sure, current professionals will still live their lives by the game, but what is the point of being a professional in something a computer will just be better. As soon as AlphaGo beat lee sedol once last year, i said that the only future of Go right now is finding out if humans still posesss a skill AlphaGo doesnt. And thats why the pair go in this series is actually most interesting to me. Can a pro + alphaGo beat AlphaGo consistently? if so, it means humans still have something of an identity.
  - nullnilvoid 9y ago
    > what is the point of being a professional in something a computer will just be better. Chess was conquered by computers a long long time (in computer time) ago and the popularity of chess has only gone up, not down. There are many professionals making a living out of chess. The art of Go will live on for sure.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      From a professional standpoint, thats pretty terrible. Sure, Catan is also easily solvable, but its played for fun. When you play as a professional you make a commitment to the board, to advance and explore the frontiers of the universe contained in the game. If the bot explores better than you every single time, you are just dedicating your life to trying to beat a calculator at arithmetics.
      - nullnilvoid 9y ago
        At least right now, computers explore the frontiers of the universe only if we humans tell them to. They explore the way we program them to. If I want to explore the frontiers of Go, I would not care about winning or losing. I would enjoy the art, the beauty, and the philosophy of Go.
      - saulrh 9y ago
        It's become a sport, with all that that implies. Training and supporting an olympic sprinter is a multi-million dollar investment. But olympic sprinters haven't been the fastest mode of travel in centuries. If all you want to do is go fast, you buy a really fast car or an aircraft and you go fast. But simply going fast isn't what the sport is about. It's about pushing humans to their limits and seeing what humans can do. It's a race. And chess has become the same. If you just want to win at chess, you ask a computer. But if you want to play a game of chess, or watch a game of chess, it's all about the humans.
        conanbatt 9y ago
        I agree with this point, but to me its a degradation of the game. It degrades into a sport. Go has something amazing about how we study pattenrs that are 100's of years old. Many current and active training materiels have up to 400 years old! Go is something were each generation looks at the previous one and builds on that, and its been a very old and iterative process. If go becomes an exercise by how little we lose to machines for, its a major degradation of the purpose of continuing that history. As a pro, you are just working towards the inevitable goal of solving the game, and then we are all free to never play that damn game ever again :)
gallerdude 9y ago
How far out are AlphaGo's ideas? Are they radically different, or rooted in human conventions?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  There is a famous player called Takemiya Masaki. His style of game is called Cosmic Go, and his games were some of the most beautiful games in history. He had an amazing ability of making this natural flows and building massive central territory: something against conventional theory. His style died eventually because no-one could play like he did. Some professionals even mentioned that such a style could not be played unless Takemiya Masaki had amazing reading skills. Alpha Go has amazing reading skills. So he can actually easily afford to play such a style. Its like the revamping of a theory we all know its playable but as humans have a hard time having a winning rate with. On the other hand, alphago is definitely playing moves that are plain bad for conventional theory, but manages to get good positions regardless. Its possible that alphago is just more thorough, and human pattern matching naturally discard moves that most of the time are bad.
  - gallerdude 9y ago
    Thank you for your in-depth and engaging answers!
  - pcnix 9y ago
    Could you suggest a book that explores go history in a way a layman can follow? The way you explain it, it seems extremely interesting.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      I dont know about history, but a book i can recommend is First Kyu. Very short and easy read about an aspiring professional play in Korea in the 50's. It containes many of the woes that haunt pro players.
  - snarf21 9y ago
    I only know a little about Go but you mentioned something here that I have discussed with a Go friend, reading skills. Is this the main reason AlphaGo is winning? It never gets tired and never misses a board position. It seems like computers finally have enough speed and memory to never miss a board position and humans (as a group) will never be able to match it, and only get further behind. Thoughts?
alanfalcon 9y ago
Thabk you for your offer! What is going through Lee Sedol's mind, watching this? Does he wish he was the guy getting the later crack at the more advanced version we see today, or has he come to terms with his single victory against AlphaGo a year ago? If these questions seem nonsensical it all, please feel free to reformulate them to something that has a more interesting answer.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  I cant speak much for lee sedol's mind :) I dont think he wants to play alphago again. Go is a game that relies a lot on confidence: professional players almost never play amateur players casually, for example. Thats because if they lose to an amateur player, it will affect their mindset, their confidence, and they could then perform worse in the real professional tournament. An argentinian amateur beat 2 strong professionals back then in 2001 in a major professional tournament: it was a huge sensation. Those two professionals basically disappeared from high ranking tournaments forever. It was said that the setback was so severe it affected them permanently(purely hearsay). Its not good for a professional to play a game he thinks he will lose.
  - Eerie 9y ago
    >I dont think he wants to play alphago again. Go is a game that relies a lot on confidence: professional players almost never play amateur players casually, for example. Thats because if they lose to an amateur player, it will affect their mindset, their confidence, and they could then perform worse in the real professional tournament. Sheesh, are their ego's really so brittle?
    - euyyn 9y ago
      Confidence and ego are different things. Self-doubt can affect your play, as in any sport. Doesn't mean that you're butthurt.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Theres a famous anecdote by Kitani Minoru, a famous Go player from the early 1900's that made a go school where every major 70's japanese player came from. He would scout talent in the country and once found a couple of brothers that played go. He played a game with the eldest, and he beat the eldest. He accepted his defeat quickly and offered Kitani to play again, that he wanted revenge. Kitani politely refused and played his younger brother. Kitan wins again, but the youngest bursts into crying. He was deeply upset at the loss and could not play another game even if he wanted to. Who do you think Kitani recommended to follow the path of a professional Go Player?
DomreiRoam 9y ago
Do you think that they will propose match with handicap? Do you know if it will change the value of the komi?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  > Do you think that they will propose match with handicap? They should, but i mentioned they probably wont because it could affect them psychologically. Nobody wants to be the first one to go down in history as a loser with handicap. They would do it online, if it was an anonymous account, maybe. But it would still do them harm. > Do you know if it will change the value of the komi? Doubt it.
  - DomreiRoam 9y ago
    Thank you
perseusprime11 9y ago
People often talk about centaurs, half human, half machine being powerful than machine. Is this just a myth when it comes to AlphaGo?
- munin 9y ago
  It's not even true in chess, centaurs stopped winning against machines unless the human half does nothing and just lets the machine play. There are centaur matches on the schedule this week for AlphaGo, so that should be interesting. edit: sources on the chess stuff follow. http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=30436 http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=3... http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Public/Article/DefaultArticle.aspx?id=266 http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Public/Article/DefaultArti... http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Public/Article/DefaultArticle.aspx?id=272 http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Public/Article/DefaultArti...
cjbprime 9y ago
Exciting! Have you written about your experience trying to become a pro anywhere?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  No, but tehre are many people that did, and some succeeded, you can google around for stories :)
hajile 9y ago
If a slightly larger board were used, could human or computer adapt better given what they currently know? What about if the shape of the board were altered? Does alphago understand the underlying principles well enough to adapt them to unknown situation? I think that is the most interesting question left.
- platz 9y ago
  redmond asked about different board sizes to someone on the alphgo tech team and I think they said it wasn't setup to play different size boards.

rw 9y ago

A) How would you characterize the differences and similarities between AlphaGo and the best human players? B) How has human play style changed since AlphaGo's introduction? C) What is the answer to the question you most want to be asked?

conanbatt 9y ago
> How would you characterize the differences and similarities between AlphaGo and the best human players? The alphago that played Lee Sedol was still very machine-like. But the master series online felt like strong superiority. It started playing some novel moves that being at least reasonable, would make it harder to play against. In a way, it was like the radical new kid with new ideas that shakes up the foundations. So far in this game (move 40~0) i read calmness from white ,a calculated calmness. As if it knew that it would win. Note: in Go, you perceive a lot of feelings from your opponent, as the moves selected express a state of mind or emotion. AlphaGo is getting hard to distinguish from human beings. > How has human play style changed since AlphaGo's introduction? Hard to say, but alphago is definitely changing the fields of study. Professional go really is like brute-forcing the game. A professinoal chooses to go through an unstudied path because he thinks its superior, and then another professional tries to ravage that path. That adversity over professional games is what advances theory. In this game, black playing 3-3 (bottom right corner invasion) would have never been played before AlphaGo in the state of human theory. I was taught 15 years ago in my first beginner class how bad doing that is. > What is the answer to the question you most want to be asked? I guess that the most important question is what is the future of Go. Sure, current professionals will still live their lives by the game, but what is the point of being a professional in something a computer will just be better. As soon as AlphaGo beat lee sedol once last year, i said that the only future of Go right now is finding out if humans still posesss a skill AlphaGo doesnt. And thats why the pair go in this series is actually most interesting to me. Can a pro + alphaGo beat AlphaGo consistently? if so, it means humans still have something of an identity.
- nullnilvoid 9y ago
  > what is the point of being a professional in something a computer will just be better. Chess was conquered by computers a long long time (in computer time) ago and the popularity of chess has only gone up, not down. There are many professionals making a living out of chess. The art of Go will live on for sure.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    From a professional standpoint, thats pretty terrible. Sure, Catan is also easily solvable, but its played for fun. When you play as a professional you make a commitment to the board, to advance and explore the frontiers of the universe contained in the game. If the bot explores better than you every single time, you are just dedicating your life to trying to beat a calculator at arithmetics.
    - nullnilvoid 9y ago
      At least right now, computers explore the frontiers of the universe only if we humans tell them to. They explore the way we program them to. If I want to explore the frontiers of Go, I would not care about winning or losing. I would enjoy the art, the beauty, and the philosophy of Go.
    - saulrh 9y ago
      It's become a sport, with all that that implies. Training and supporting an olympic sprinter is a multi-million dollar investment. But olympic sprinters haven't been the fastest mode of travel in centuries. If all you want to do is go fast, you buy a really fast car or an aircraft and you go fast. But simply going fast isn't what the sport is about. It's about pushing humans to their limits and seeing what humans can do. It's a race. And chess has become the same. If you just want to win at chess, you ask a computer. But if you want to play a game of chess, or watch a game of chess, it's all about the humans.
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        I agree with this point, but to me its a degradation of the game. It degrades into a sport. Go has something amazing about how we study pattenrs that are 100's of years old. Many current and active training materiels have up to 400 years old! Go is something were each generation looks at the previous one and builds on that, and its been a very old and iterative process. If go becomes an exercise by how little we lose to machines for, its a major degradation of the purpose of continuing that history. As a pro, you are just working towards the inevitable goal of solving the game, and then we are all free to never play that damn game ever again :)

gallerdude 9y ago

How far out are AlphaGo's ideas? Are they radically different, or rooted in human conventions?

conanbatt 9y ago
There is a famous player called Takemiya Masaki. His style of game is called Cosmic Go, and his games were some of the most beautiful games in history. He had an amazing ability of making this natural flows and building massive central territory: something against conventional theory. His style died eventually because no-one could play like he did. Some professionals even mentioned that such a style could not be played unless Takemiya Masaki had amazing reading skills. Alpha Go has amazing reading skills. So he can actually easily afford to play such a style. Its like the revamping of a theory we all know its playable but as humans have a hard time having a winning rate with. On the other hand, alphago is definitely playing moves that are plain bad for conventional theory, but manages to get good positions regardless. Its possible that alphago is just more thorough, and human pattern matching naturally discard moves that most of the time are bad.
- gallerdude 9y ago
  Thank you for your in-depth and engaging answers!
- pcnix 9y ago
  Could you suggest a book that explores go history in a way a layman can follow? The way you explain it, it seems extremely interesting.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    I dont know about history, but a book i can recommend is First Kyu. Very short and easy read about an aspiring professional play in Korea in the 50's. It containes many of the woes that haunt pro players.
- snarf21 9y ago
  I only know a little about Go but you mentioned something here that I have discussed with a Go friend, reading skills. Is this the main reason AlphaGo is winning? It never gets tired and never misses a board position. It seems like computers finally have enough speed and memory to never miss a board position and humans (as a group) will never be able to match it, and only get further behind. Thoughts?

alanfalcon 9y ago

Thabk you for your offer! What is going through Lee Sedol's mind, watching this? Does he wish he was the guy getting the later crack at the more advanced version we see today, or has he come to terms with his single victory against AlphaGo a year ago? If these questions seem nonsensical it all, please feel free to reformulate them to something that has a more interesting answer.

conanbatt 9y ago
I cant speak much for lee sedol's mind :) I dont think he wants to play alphago again. Go is a game that relies a lot on confidence: professional players almost never play amateur players casually, for example. Thats because if they lose to an amateur player, it will affect their mindset, their confidence, and they could then perform worse in the real professional tournament. An argentinian amateur beat 2 strong professionals back then in 2001 in a major professional tournament: it was a huge sensation. Those two professionals basically disappeared from high ranking tournaments forever. It was said that the setback was so severe it affected them permanently(purely hearsay). Its not good for a professional to play a game he thinks he will lose.
- Eerie 9y ago
  >I dont think he wants to play alphago again. Go is a game that relies a lot on confidence: professional players almost never play amateur players casually, for example. Thats because if they lose to an amateur player, it will affect their mindset, their confidence, and they could then perform worse in the real professional tournament. Sheesh, are their ego's really so brittle?
  - euyyn 9y ago
    Confidence and ego are different things. Self-doubt can affect your play, as in any sport. Doesn't mean that you're butthurt.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    Theres a famous anecdote by Kitani Minoru, a famous Go player from the early 1900's that made a go school where every major 70's japanese player came from. He would scout talent in the country and once found a couple of brothers that played go. He played a game with the eldest, and he beat the eldest. He accepted his defeat quickly and offered Kitani to play again, that he wanted revenge. Kitani politely refused and played his younger brother. Kitan wins again, but the youngest bursts into crying. He was deeply upset at the loss and could not play another game even if he wanted to. Who do you think Kitani recommended to follow the path of a professional Go Player?

DomreiRoam 9y ago

Do you think that they will propose match with handicap? Do you know if it will change the value of the komi?

conanbatt 9y ago
> Do you think that they will propose match with handicap? They should, but i mentioned they probably wont because it could affect them psychologically. Nobody wants to be the first one to go down in history as a loser with handicap. They would do it online, if it was an anonymous account, maybe. But it would still do them harm. > Do you know if it will change the value of the komi? Doubt it.
- DomreiRoam 9y ago
  Thank you

perseusprime11 9y ago

People often talk about centaurs, half human, half machine being powerful than machine. Is this just a myth when it comes to AlphaGo?

munin 9y ago
It's not even true in chess, centaurs stopped winning against machines unless the human half does nothing and just lets the machine play. There are centaur matches on the schedule this week for AlphaGo, so that should be interesting. edit: sources on the chess stuff follow. http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=30436 http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=3... http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Public/Article/DefaultArticle.aspx?id=266 http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Public/Article/DefaultArti... http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Public/Article/DefaultArticle.aspx?id=272 http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Public/Article/DefaultArti...

cjbprime 9y ago

Exciting! Have you written about your experience trying to become a pro anywhere?

conanbatt 9y ago
No, but tehre are many people that did, and some succeeded, you can google around for stories :)

hajile 9y ago

If a slightly larger board were used, could human or computer adapt better given what they currently know? What about if the shape of the board were altered? Does alphago understand the underlying principles well enough to adapt them to unknown situation? I think that is the most interesting question left.

platz 9y ago
redmond asked about different board sizes to someone on the alphgo tech team and I think they said it wasn't setup to play different size boards.