I don't think it's an overstatement to say that, since playing Lee Sedol in 2016, AlphaGo has completely revolutionized professional and amateur go. It's certainly not unprecedented — the last major revolution happened in the early 20th century (often called the 'Shin Fuseki' era [0]) — but AlphaGo has demonstrably surpassed any previous high-water mark.
> I wonder if this system produced more new styles of play.
Absolutely. One such innovation has been the use of early 3-3 invasions [1]. There are many more, and indeed AlphaGo's games are still being analyzed by professional players. Michael Redmond, a 9-dan professional, has been working with the American Go Association on one such series [2].
> I wonder if the fact that it had no outside reinforcement made it produce movements that we have already seen that are somehow inherent to the game...
Interestingly, yes. Strong players have commented that AlphaGo seems to agree with things that players like Go Seigen [3] have suggested in the past, but that were never fully developed or understood [4].
I have only skimmed the paper but one thing I don't see any discussion of is whether komi (the handicap given to white for going second) is correct.
They do say the rules used for all games, including self-play, set komi consistently to 7.5 .
If the strongest AI was consistently winning predominantly with one color it would be an indication that komi isn't fair for the best play.
Of the 20 games released for the strongest play it appears white won 14 times and black 6. I don't think that is enough to be conclusive but maybe komi is too high.
I wonder if different "correct" play at the strongest levels would be learned with a 6.5 komi.
You can only change komi by full point increments. There is a .5 to break ties, but a komi of 7.5 is identical to one of 7.4.
From a theoretical standpoint, any non-integer komi should lead to one player winning 100% of the time. So even if the actual win ratio is 14:6 at komi=7.5 that might still be the best value.
If you had an estimate of the real difference, you could switch to breaking ties randomly. Black wins 60% of the ties, white wins 40%. There will be a ratio at which each side should win 50% of the time.
I agree that with perfect play, it will be a 50% of a tie to each side. But it is still interesting to ask for a better estimate of practical play.
Michael Redmond mentions this in the AlphaGo vs AlphaGo review series he's doing with the AGA. AlphaGo selfplay games are with 7.5 komi under Chinese rules, and apparently, Deepmind has stated that black vs white wins is almost exactly 50/50. IIRC Redmond mentioned that white (?) only had some sub 1% advantage in the entire self-play corpus.
I don't remember where I read it but in some earlier versions of AlphaGo they tried a komi of 6.5 and black ended up winning more often. That indicates the correct komi value is 7, but since Go doesn't have ties, you have to pick which side you want to favor to break the tie. (White seems reasonable.)
Well in Japanese rules the komi is 6.5 so that's the alternative that tends to come up. Some quick searching I found a transcript from one of the games where DeepMind said 7.5 slightly favors white but they didn't say anything about 6.5 or 5.5, while a random comment from r/baduk claims that pro game analysis shows 6.5 slightly favors black and 7.5 slightly favors white.
the correct komi number has puzzled Go players for centuries, now we might finally have a chance to figure out the right answer (although not without some reservations). over the last 5 decades, komi has consistently been raised to keep the game more leveled between white and black (black makes the first move, so has the advantage). historically, there was no komi, and people kept an even game by always playing even number of games with each player switching sides after each game.
for whatever reason, it's no longer feasible in modern pro game (not to mention that this could result in no winner if each player wins half the game), so komi was introduced. at first at 5.5, and steadily climbed higher to 7.5 at present. In pro game, even a change of 1 is considered a big deal, so from 5.5 to 7.5 is hardly trivial.
Now with alphago playing "perfect" games against itself, we might finally be able to put to rest the debate of the correct komi (the Japanese Go associations for decades have kept meticulous records of every professional game, in order to find the correct komi).
There is a big "but" though. The correct komi at Alphgo Zero's level might not be the correct komi for human level players (AlphaGo is estimated to be 2-3 handicaps above human play; this is a bigger gap between the average pro player and the best amateurs).
Indeed, the change from 5.5 komi to 7.5 komi also had a lot to do with the change in play style rather than simply zooming in on the "correct" komi number. In the 70s and 80s, predominant play style was more conservative, and 5.5 might well be the correct komi for the time (defined as resulting in 50:50 chance of winning for either side). As play style shifted to become more aggressive and confrontational (actually fueld somewhat by the introduction of komi), it was discovered that komi needs to be raised to keep chances of winning at 50:50.
To make an analogy, suppose one is playing a casino game of chance that gives the house a slight advantage (similar to the first mover advantage for black in go). If one only makes small bets, the house will end up winning only a small amount. in other words, the player needs to be compensated by a small amount to make the game "fair".
If however one makes big bets (i.e. more aggressive game play), then the compensation needs to be bigger too, to make the game "fair", even if the underlying probabilities have not changed.
following this logic, while 7.5 komi is fair for Alphago vs. alphago games, it might not be the right number for human games. I suspect it might be samller for humans.... if only we could calibrate Alphago to the average human level and generate millions of self-play games...
With respect to your very interesting comment (I genuinely appreciate your input), you appear to have mis-understood the comment you were replying to.
You've commented on the differences in the style of play that AlphaGo introduced, but the post you were replying to (by
aeleos) was going a step further and hypothesising about the potential for a newer, completely 'non-human' style that AlphaGo Zero may have created.
Your comments definitely contribute to the discussion but it was bugging me that there appeared to be a tangent forming about AlphaGo that was overlooking AlphaGo Zero which would be the more interesting area to explore.
Yes, aeleos was interested in that, and so am I, and it seems to be what this entire thread _should be about_. kndyry steered back towards AlphaGo. I'm not sure this merits any further disection.
I was one of the remote hires brought on through the first Bitcoin SAT on Reddit. I recall completing the test and thinking "well, that was fun, but there's no way I aced it," particularly because one of the questions, I was pretty sure, was a trick meant to see how you'd handle not coming up with an answer.
To my surprise, a few days later Olaf emailed me and asked whether I could meet him on Skype. The interview lasted for around an hour and we found a lot in common (Olaf studied sociology and I studied anthropology, we're both rock climbers, and, of course, massive crypto nerds), and toward the end he asked whether I was okay with working support. The quote's not mine, but I answered "when you're asked to join a rocket ship, you don't ask where you sit."
A few days passed and Barry Kwok contacted me to make it official. I joined the team on November 1st, 2013. Those early days were wild, even from North Carolina where I lived. Bitcoin's price was soaring and the users (and tickets) were pouring in.
The rate at which Olaf's team became acclimated, with so few existing resources, is a testament to his leadership and their outstanding caliber, and something I'll never forget. You really had the feeling that you were "a part of something big," surrounded by talented and inspiring minds.
It was a wonderful experience in my life, but one that I don't talk about very often and haven't posted about until now. All the best to Olaf in his continued adventures: no matter the route, I'm sure he'll send it.
I'd love to hear something about your thoughts on anthropology and computers (and work).
My girlfriend is finishing her master's in anthropology. I'm going to the Anthro/IT conference in Tartu (Estonia) in November. I'm curious about the intersection.
Sure, though I have to confess to trending more toward IT than anth, and being limited in exposure to my sub-discipline (cultural anthropology).
Immediately after my time with Coinbase, I started working at Duke University. My team provided web application development and protected data management to social science researchers, and worked with the Department of Public Instruction on certain projects.
Without question, data management is the thing. Field data is almost entirely electronic (collected through the web, SMS, or downloaded off of tablets (mobile engagement is also big)), or will eventually be made electronic. This benefits later analysis in something like R, Stata or Julia, but introduces a host of concerns relating to secure storage, access, egress and ingress. Large data sets are also sometimes shared between institutions and typically come with stringent use requirements (up to and including air gapping).
It's very new territory for many in the social sciences, and they rely on IT to provide them with solutions and answer their questions. Interestingly, the medical field have already covered a great deal of this ground, so their work can often be used as a template for - or at least a vision of - the future of best practice in the social sciences.
For those who might like to see this concept explored more fully, I highly recommend Greg Egan's Permutation City [0].
To quote: “Paul struggled to imagine the outside world on his own terms, but it was almost impossible. Not only was he scattered across the globe, but widely separated machines were simultaneously computing different moments of his subjective time frame. Was the distance from Tokyo to New York now the length of his corpus callosum? Had the world shrunk to the size of his skull – and vanished from time altogether, except for the fifty computers which contributed at any one time to what he called ‘the present’?”
Their peers will learn that 'screw ups' on whatever arbitrary scale, which are as common as human, will be punished by loss of employment, plus all of the negatives that status carries. This will teach them to become militantly risk averse and, by proxy, utterly afraid of and resistant to change. Meanwhile, the folks you let go, the ones who truly learned the lesson, end up using their newfound experience to improve processes elsewhere.
Playing devil's advocate, my first response would be to register accounts for, say, the 2,500 most common English words and then compose some rather nice essays.
Toward your latter paragraphs, I am reminded of the medieval practice of reflection on mortality, momento mori [0]. There is a great deal of extant architecture and art meant to inspire one to meditate on the subject, for example the Capela dos Ossos in Portugal, whose entrance bears the phrase Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos ("We bones that here are, for yours await") [1], and the imagery in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting The Triumph of Death [2]. It's unfortunate that, despite the amount of rich Western thought dedicated to such contemplations, popular modern literature, as you observe, seems at least generally averse to the subject.
I've come across thoughts about death mostly in Buddhist literature. This is a great introduction to the western Christian outlook on it. Thanks!
I also wanted to recommend Atul Gawande's excellent "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" to help get a more visceral understanding of death. He talks about how the human body starts degenerating as early as we hit 30, and paints a memorable picture of how every next moment is a moment closer to our death.
There are a few browser add-ons you might be interested in, for example Pentadactyl [0], or an entirely new browser like luakit [1], to return navigation control to the keyboard.
Another thing you might consider - and my personal preference - is switching your mouse for a trackball. I use the Logitech M570 [2] and find that I can be doing heavy UI work all day without fatigue. This is because your thumb drives the trackball, leaving the mouse body and your wrist stationary. In fact this mouse has been so great I've gotten everyone on my team using one as well.
Ms. Peng's client is most certainly not the State. As a public defense attorney, her clients truly are the accused unable to retain private legal services - the indigent. As Ms. Peng argues, the service provided by public defenders is a constitutional right, not to mention one of the fundamental elements in a system designed to provide for adequate and universal representation. That the State issues her salary is a direct result of the constitutionality of the services public defense offices provide, and is the mandated prerogative of the State in due compliance with the Constitution. Ms. Peng has granted us an insider view of what is becoming an increasingly slippery slope. We cannot eschew the rightful defense of any group, no matter how "marginalized," and presume in the same breath that those criteria will never broaden or change. Nor can we expect legal disenfranchisement, and an inevitable increase in unjust incarceration, to resolve anything.
I'm trying to outline the problem that the State is not interested in funding those public defense offices. They are doing the absolute minimum required by the Constitution. In contrast, look how well-funded and heavily-equipped are the police and other law enforcement agencies.
The author at several points seems to dither between an insightful consideration of the technological present, and what I can only quantify as an underlying fear indicative of the very sleepiness against which we're being warned. For example:
> My deeper question comes from my position as a professor here for the last 12 years, where I have watched the lure of Silicon Valley grow stronger. If the best and the brightest of you are drawn to building addictive apps rather than making great journalism, important films, or literature that survives the test of time, will we as a society be ultimately impoverished?
Might not have Rip said, on the day of his return to waking life, "if the best and the brightest of you are drawn to building democracy rather than making great works in the name of the monarchy, an institution that is sure to survive the test of time, will we as a society be ultimately impoverished for lack of grace?"
One cannot claim that the future is being misunderstood because it does not look like one's past. Yes, the increasing ubiquity of processing machines has altered society. These are still early days and the changes are so new, it's a bit like bumbling around in the dark. It seems short-sighted to assume that the current state is in any way permanent or indicative of future states.
> I was lucky enough to be involved with some artists like Bob Dylan, The Band, George Harrison, and Martin Scorsese, whose work will surely stand the test of time. I’m not sure I know what the implications are of the role-model shift from rebel filmmaker to software coder.
Neither are we. Something, however, is quite certain: whatever the implications, the future is coming and calling it wrong because it is incongruous with the past is to miss it.
I'm not sure where to differentiate between the rebel filmmaker and the rebel software application developer - at least not in his analogy.
The rebel artist is there to disrupt social norms through a particular medium. In his time, anti-Vietnam messages were a big one.
Now apps like Uber aim to disrupt social norms through the software medium. (I will argue all day that software is art, BTW.) Just because the author doesn't recognize the movement personally doesn't mean it has really changed all that much.
(P.S. All of author's heroes listed are rich. I fully believe both art and riches can be pursued at the same time, but being paid well for doing what you love is the same as it's always been.)
Well, they are also out to disrupt the government enforced taxi monopolies using VC money.
I agree that there isn't anything patentable about their approach. We'll see how hard it is to compete with their combination of infrastructure and network effect.
However, I think there might be some (quite substantial) difference between a terrible war and a terrible government-regulated taxi service. The importance and weight of an issue and so on.
> I wonder if this system produced more new styles of play.
Absolutely. One such innovation has been the use of early 3-3 invasions [1]. There are many more, and indeed AlphaGo's games are still being analyzed by professional players. Michael Redmond, a 9-dan professional, has been working with the American Go Association on one such series [2].
> I wonder if the fact that it had no outside reinforcement made it produce movements that we have already seen that are somehow inherent to the game...
Interestingly, yes. Strong players have commented that AlphaGo seems to agree with things that players like Go Seigen [3] have suggested in the past, but that were never fully developed or understood [4].
Very, very interesting work indeed.
[0] https://senseis.xmp.net/?ShinFuseki
[1] https://www.eurogofed.org/index.html?id=127
[2] http://www.usgo.org/news/category/go-news/computer-goai/mast...
[3] https://senseis.xmp.net/?GoSeigen
[4] https://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14129