4 ms·
I see a lot of comments downplaying this achievement, saying it's not impressive or it won't be impressive until X condition is met. I welcome skepticism and c
by sgillen 7y ago
I see a lot of comments downplaying this achievement, saying it's not impressive or it won't be impressive until X condition is met.
I welcome skepticism and criticism for this sort of thing, and think most of it that I've seen here is well founded. But I would like to take a second to explain why I think this, and really all the progress in this area, is actually a really impressive achievement to me.
Let me try and frame this from the computers perspective. Let's assume a resolution of 1024x780. I'm not sure what size frames they actually feed their agent but it's not that important to the discussion, the point is it's a big image, and according to the article this agent is learning from pixels. So, you the computer are given let's say 1024*780 = 798720 numbers to look at. You then choose a number between 0 and 798720 (or the crazy 10^26 number the article gives as the possible number of actions at each frame) as your action for that frame, and then you get another 798720 numbers to look at. After the round is over (on average 20 minutes, if you make a decision every frame that's 20x60x60 = 72000 rounds). You get one number telling you how well you did. You repeat the process and get a new number. It's higher this time! But what is the cause? was it that click you made on frame 22456? or maybe that unlikely move you made on frame 4567?
Obviously I'm oversimplifying here, and the numbers are probably wrong. but I still think what I've said gives the right idea for what kind of task we (as a society/community/whatever) have somehow gotten a computer to solve. Computers are DUMB, the fact that it's able to play this game at all, let alone at a high level, is still a minor miracle to me.
- timeattack 7y agoI think that downplaying the achievement is more like defensive mechanism which exists to protect illusion of human brain superiority.
- sgillen 7y agoPart of the problem is the hype in the other direction. I guess there are those who claim that this sort of result constitutes super human intelligence or something close to AGI. When in reality this is a hyper specialized system that has taken many man years of work to realize.
- TaupeRanger 7y agoNot at all. We've known machines are better than humans at machine-like tasks for hundreds of years. IMO responses like yours are defense mechanisms of AI researchers/enthusiasts who want to protect the illusion that they are creating things that do anything remotely resembling what the human brain does.
- drchewbacca 7y agoKasparov comments on chess computers in an interview with Thierry Paunin on pages 4-5 of issue 55 of Jeux & Stratégie (published in 1989): ‘Question: ... Two top grandmasters have gone down to chess computers: Portisch against “Leonardo” and Larsen against “Deep Thought”. It is well known that you have strong views on this subject. Will a computer be world champion, one day ...? Kasparov: Ridiculous! A machine will always remain a machine, that is to say a tool to help the player work and prepare. Never shall I be beaten by a machine! Never will a program be invented which surpasses human intelligence. And when I say intelligence, I also mean intuition and imagination. Can you see a machine writing a novel or poetry? Better still, can you imagine a machine conducting this interview instead of you? With me replying to its questions?’
- TaupeRanger 7y agoThe fact that Kasparov was obviously wrong about a computer's ability to solve a concrete optimization problem better than him says nothing of value whatsoever and essentially proves my original point. We already knew machines were better than humans at these kinds of tasks, but people (like Kasparov) who didn't understand what computers were capable of will make wrong statements.
- chillacy 7y agoI don't think the AI learns from pixels (nor does it move through mouse/kb commands), it has direct API access to the game. Nonetheless it is impressive.