Open thread, Feb. 01 - Feb. 07, 2016

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Would anyone like to comment on Eliezer's facebook post about the AlphaGo victory over Fan Hui?

People occasionally ask me about signs that the remaining timeline might be short. It's very easy for nonprofessionals to take too much alarm too easily. Deep Blue beating Kasparov at chess was not such a sign. Robotic cars are not such a sign. This is.

It's very easy for nonprofessionals to take too much alarm too easily.

Who cares about nonprofessionals? Oh well, EY understands the situation better than nonprofessionals. What an achievement. Who would have thought.

4Bryan-san10y

AlphaGo will be playing against a top Korean player, Lee Se-dol, in March. Lee is a 9 dan player (highest tier) whereas Fan Hui was only a 2 dan. AlphaGo beat Fan 5-0 so it's hard to tell how good of a player it is in comparison. I'm very interested in seeing the results of the next match. Note: There seems to be some misreporting on the rank of Lee Se-dol on some American news sites. He's definitely a top Korean and world player, but I don't think he's #1 right now. Someone else is welcome to correct me on this.

9_rpd10y

There was quite a bit of commentary on the Jan 27 post ... http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/n8b/link_alphago_mastering_the_ancient_game_of_go/#comments tl;dr: reactions are mixed. My personal reaction is that it is surprising that neural networks, even large ones fed with clever inputs and used in clever ways, could be used to boost Go play to this level. Although it has long been known that neural networks are universal function approximators, this achievement is a "no, really."