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posted by cmn32480 on Friday January 06 2017, @09:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the skynet-has-begun dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday January 06 2017, @08:23PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 06 2017, @08:23PM (#450394) Journal

    In the US there were only chess stars for a few years, basically from when Fisher started his climb toward the championship until the guy who beat him lost it. And the peak was when Fisher was challenging for world champion. A year or two after then the "chess coffee-shop", HardCastle's, in Berkeley folded. It's been decades since I've seen a game played in public.

    Partially this is due to increased competition. Computer games expanded during that period, and it also became a lot easier to play on-line...but that doesn't draw in kibitzers, so it doesn't add to the popularity. And partially it's because there's no longer nationalism pushing it. And partially it's because it's against the flow of the current decades, which have returned to their normal anti-intellectualism. (When I was in high school during the 1950's, the chess club was only of interest to a very few. No members were socially popular.)

    If you look though US history, anti-intellectualism has been dominant though most of the time. Usually not strongly dominant, but still dominant. I think this last election is the first time it's been dominant enough to decide a national election, though.

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