Over the past few workweek , an unknown histrion call “ Master ” has been thrashing multitude in on-line matches of the ancient strategy plot " Go . "
The spate of arse - whoopings was causingquite a stirwithin circles of on-line Go enthusiasts . Somepeople get down to speculatewhether the assaulter was in fact even human , or actually a machine .
Yesterday the rumors of their identity were finally put to rest . Demis Hassabis , chief of Google ’s affiliate DeepMind , posted on Twitterthat “ Master ” was actually the study of their artificial intelligence service system AlphaGo . While playing on the Tygem and FoxGo host , AlphaGo won over 50 games , lose none , and tie just one . The draw was also only because the opponent ’s meshing connexion timed out , according tomany report .
You might remember AlphaGo from last yr , when it managed tobeat the current Go world champion , Lee Se - dol , 4 - 1 . Se - dol , who plays on the Tygem server himself , is rated as a “ 9 dan professional ” , which is the ultimate social station for Go players . His match-up with AlphaGo was the first time a auto had beaten a 9 dan player and was wide heraldedas a watershed achievementfor artificial tidings .
As forthe secret plan of Go , it ’s a profoundly complex boardgame thought to have been played over 2,500 twelvemonth previous ago in China . The introductory premise is order opprobrious or white stones on a gridded display board , with the eventual hope of capturing opponent ’s stones and occupying territory on the board . It might voice straightforward , but there are more possible place in the plot than atoms in the universe .
This ludicrous level of complexity means that players often accent how intuition and “ feel ” can act as a part of the game , something which computers are n’t peculiarly good at .
The nervous connection of AlphaGo can effectively see to mirror how humans fiddle Go by “ watching ” and infer the motion of real multitude playing . DeepMind ab initio did this by plugging in over 30 million motility from games played by human expert . These unofficial online games are just more trial run runs to see how the up-to-the-minute improvement are put to work .
Why they select to do it covertly against unwitting players is n’t clear . It could be a publicity stunt , it could just be commodious , or perhaps it ’s because humans might align the way they play if they know their opponent is a machine . Whatever the cause , it ’s still another dizzyingly telling feat for DeepMind and a recent boom for hokey intelligence .
