Lumifer comments on [Link] AlphaGo: Mastering the ancient game of Go with Machine Learning - Less Wrong

14 Post author: ESRogs 27 January 2016 09:04PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 29 January 2016 05:39:06PM 2 points [-]

An interesting comment:

The European champion of Go is not the world champion, or even close. The BBC, for example, reported that “Google achieves AI ‘breakthrough’ by beating Go champion,” and hundreds of other news outlets picked up essentially the same headline. But Go is scarcely a sport in Europe; and the champion in question is ranked only #633 in the world. A robot that beat the 633rd-ranked tennis pro would be impressive, but it still wouldn’t be fair to say that it had “mastered” the game. DeepMind made major progress, but the Go journey is still not over; a fascinating thread at YCombinator suggests that the program — a work in progress — would currently be ranked #279.

Comment author: tanagrabeast 30 January 2016 01:47:35AM *  2 points [-]

Does one have to be the master to be a master?

I would be amazingly impressed by a robot beating the 633rd-ranked tennis pro. That would easily put it in the top 1% of the top 1% of those who play tennis. How close to the top of a sport or game would a human have to be before we would call them a master of it? Surely not that high!

Imagine the following exchange:

"I'm the best blacksmith in Britain."

"Oh. Well, this is awkward. You see, I was looking for a master blacksmith..."

Comment author: Lumifer 01 February 2016 03:26:36PM 0 points [-]

Does one have to be the master to be a master?

The claim trumpeted around the 'net is not that a computer program plays Go really well. The claim is that it is now better than any human. Of course, if you read the small print, there is a mention that it has not yet played the human world champion, but the overall thrust of the message is that Go is "done", the same way checkers and chess are "done" now.

Comment author: ESRogs 31 January 2016 06:24:38AM 0 points [-]

It will be interesting to see how much progress they've made since October.

My guess is that they think they're going to win (see for example David Silver's "quiet confidence" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-dKXOlsf98&t=5m9s).

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