AlphaGo
Matrix rising ? BY HENRY THOMPSON
Hollywood ’ s ultimate nightmare of a takeover by the machines has come a little closer after a super-computer beat a master of the 2,500-year-old board game Go
Science-fiction has long dramatised the emergence of artificial intelligence able to out-think the whole of humanity . Think the Terminator or the Matrix which posited the rise of sentient machines , and you have some idea of the astonishing implications of Google ’ s Deep Mind super-computer called AlphaGo .
In March , the Deep Mind machine beat the Korean grandmaster and European champion of the strategy game by four games to one . But what shocked watching experts in the board game and computer algorithms was that AlphaGo played in non-obvious ways , making sly , even bizarre moves .
“ The really significant thing about AlphaGo is that it ( and its creators ) cannot explain its moves ,” John Naughton reported in his Observer Networker column .
“ And yet it plays a very difficult game expertly . It ’ s displaying a capability eerily similar to what we call intuition – knowledge obtained without conscious reasoning .”
What the experts were saying is that AlphaGo is not just a number-cruncher using its massive computer memory as IBM ’ s Deep Blue did when it beat chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov back in 1997 .
“ Not so : the number of possible positions in Go outnumber the number of atoms in the universe and far exceed the number of possibilities in chess ,” added Naughton .
“ If AlphaGo really demonstrates that machine could be intuitive , then we have definitely crossed a Rubicon of some kind .”
The traditional Chinese game of Go involves two players taking turns to place black and white marker discs known as stones on a 19 squares by 19 squares grid . Players win by taking control of the most territory on the board , by surrounding opponent ’ s stones with their own .
AlphaGo was developed in London by Google ’ s DeepMind UK branch , and specifically designed to challenge grandmasters of Go . No wonder the words of Sir Alex Ferguson resonate with millions of gamers , all around the world : “ As long as there are games to play , then it is not over .”
One man in particular , Lee Se-dol , from South Korea , would have sympathised , faced with his toughest opponent to date . He knew AlphaGo had already beaten a professional - in October 2015 , defeating the European Go champion Fan Hui .
That was the first time a computer programme had beaten a professional human player on a full-sized board without a handicap .
When Lee Se-dol faced AlphaGo , he had the second highest number of Go international championship victories in the world . According to the Korean Herald , Mr Se-dol was considered the fourth greatest Go player in the world currently .
The first three-of-five games ended in victory for AlphaGo . But Mr Se-dol beat AlphaGo in the fourth game , when the programme resigned at the 180th move . AlphaGo won the fifth game on Mr Se-Dol ’ s resignation .
Shortly after the second game , Mr Se-dol said that he felt “ speechless . From the very beginning of the match , I could never manage an upper hand for one single move . It was AlphaGo ’ s complete victory .”
Lee said his inevitable loss to the machine was saddening , but that “ robots will never understand the beauty of the game the same way that we humans do ”.
Lee went on further to say that his game 4 win was “ a priceless win that I would not exchange for anything ”.
Most experts were expecting the Korean to beat the AlphaGo programme easily . Murray Campbell , creator of the Deep Blue software , described AlphaGo ’ s win as “ the end of an era … board games are more or less done and it ’ s time to move on ” .
AlphaGo won a prize of $ 1 million , with the cash being donated to several charities , primarily UNICEF . Mr Se-dol received $ 150,000 for participating and an additional $ 20,000 for his win .
As Adam Roberts wrote in the Guardian : “ Being able to crunch huge numbers really quickly is not the same thing as intelligence , and certainly not the same thing as sentient self-consciousness .
“ The ability to intuit , to make leaps of comprehension – not just to extrapolate according to pre-programmed rules but to speculate – is a lot closer to the Holy Grail of proper AI .
“ AlphaGo ’ s achievement is more modest .”
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