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AlphaGo has won another 50 games against the world's top Go players, this time with little fanfare:
DeepMind's AlphaGo is back, and it's been secretly crushing the world's best Go players over the past couple of weeks. The new version of the AI has played 51 games online and won 50 of them, including a victory against Ke Jie, currently the world's best human Go player. Amusingly, the 51st game wasn't even a loss; it was drawn after the Internet connection dropped out. [...] Following its single game loss [in a match against Lee Sedol], DeepMind has been hard at work on a new and improved version of AlphaGo—and it appears the AI is back bigger, better, and more undefeated than ever. DeepMind's co-founder Demis Hassabis announced on Twitter yesterday that "the new version of AlphaGo" had been playing "some unofficial online games" on the Tygem and FoxGo servers under the names Magister (P) and Master (P). It played 51 games in total against some of the world's best players, including Ke Jie, Gu Li, and Lee Sedol—and didn't lose a single one.
That isn't to say that AlphaGo's unofficial games went unnoticed, though. Over the last week, a number of forum threads have popped up to discuss this mystery debutante who has been thrashing the world's best players. Given its unbeaten record and some very "non-human" moves, most onlookers were certain that Master and Magister were being played by an AI—they just weren't certain if it was AlphaGo, or perhaps another AI out of China or Japan. It is somewhat unclear, but it seems that DeepMind didn't warn the opponents that they were playing against AlphaGo. Perhaps they were told after their games had concluded, though. Ali Jabarin, a professional Go player, apparently bumped into Ke Jie after he'd been beaten by the AI: "He [was] a bit shocked... just repeating 'it's too strong.'"
Will there still be "Go celebrities" once DeepMind has finished mopping the floor with them and turned their attention elsewhere?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday January 06 2017, @04:40PM
I don't think I have ever read anything about GO having infinite moves. There is a limit, it's just a really large amount of them.
I do know that it's a more complex game then for example chess but there is still a finite amount of possible legal moves. A lot of those moves are not even going to be interesting moves, they might be legal but not interesting. As computers and software become better and faster that ought to diminish the complexity as far as the number of interesting moves goes. They might all have to be evaluated but that is just a matter of computation and that is all that this really does - it's massive amounts of computation far beyond the scope of a single human. Interesting in itself but not interesting enough for it to eliminate human Go-celebs.
Do you get excited to when you Sudoku solver does its brute-force or programmed attack? I give you that this, Go, is somewhat more sophisticated but in principle it's the same - a machine or a program excelling at the single task of its entire purpose.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday January 06 2017, @06:06PM
I think you are talking about different things.
Even though Go by definition can't have infinite moves, that's doesn't mean that all the moves (and their value interpretations) are actually able to be determined by any known technology during the lifetime of a given human player/opponent--under which condition the moves aren't infinite, but still can't be determined.
The wise folks over at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go [wikipedia.org] give the following observations about AI trouble with just the endgame to illustrate some of the difficulty involved:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @06:21PM
I don't think I have ever read anything about GO having infinite moves. There is a limit, it's just a really large amount of them.
There are arguably more possible configurations and moves than the number of atoms in the universe, so not infinite, but not something a computer can do either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @07:36PM
You don't bruteforce go, or chess for that matter. However, the thing with chess is that a human player can be beaten with an algorithm that gives same results as bruteforcing next n moves which is a pretty uncreative approach. In go, that's a no-go. You absolutely need to do something "smarter" unless you have a dyson sphere around the sun made of computronium.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 06 2017, @09:21PM
I might borrow that one.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @10:26PM
unless you have a dyson sphere around the sun made of computronium.
I might borrow that one.
Want to mine the last bitcoin?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 06 2017, @10:33PM
I gotta hoard all the Gemcoins so I can become a billionaire.
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