We humans are no longer undefeated in the classic game of Go. Next year: the first computer poet laureate
Posted 08.08.2008 at 3:37 pm
8 Comments
Go Game
GNU licensed
The game of Go has long been a bastion of human brilliance. While computers have gotten steadily better at playing chess and poker, they've had a harder time wrapping their silicon minds around the elegant Japanese strategy game. That's why it's a big deal that a computer Go player known as MoGo beat a top-ranked human, Myungwan Kim, yesterday.
While the complexity of chess is quite high -- there are an estimated 10123 possible ways a chess game can play out -- the systematic nature of that game is susceptible to the sorts of strategies computers are good at, with libraries of endgames and simple heuristics for eliminating possible but nonsensical plays. Go, played by placing stones on a uniform 19x19 grid, does not allow for that kind of shortcut. The strategy that's proved most effective for computer Go is the Monte Carlo method, in which possible moves are assembled in a tree structure, and given statistical weight based on how likely they are to lead to a win.
As computers get more powerful, those Monte Carlo calculations can be carried out quickly and thoroughly enough to make them an effective tool against humans. For yesterday's game, the MoGo software ran on a supercomputer with 800 parallel processors.
It's starting to seem as though it won't be long before computers can reliably beat human champions at Go, chess, and all the other pursuits in which we used to be the dominant species. I have yet to see a computer that can bid a bridge hand with any skill -- that's yet another genre of strategic problem -- but I'm not putting too much money on the human team.
[Via Slashdot]
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This doesn't mean we will no longer be the "dominate species" at these games. Humans did create the algorithms that led to this computer victory. Until there is a jump to complete, independent sentience of a computer mind, these accomplishments will only go to display human ingenuity.
Also, think about how much more efficient the human brain is. The 800 parallel processors must take up huge amounts of space and draw a ton of power compared to the brain. So while we can build a better computer by just throwing more resources at it until it gets good enough, the human brain is still in a sense much much better at solving the problem.
it still needed a nine stone handicap to win. That still means that the majority of pros can beat it in an even game. It's coming along, but still a long ways from playing even with a 9P.
Nine Stones is pretty significant. I'm only about 6 kyu, so something that takes 9 stones from a 9 dan is likely to beat me, but the point of choosing your moves, is to not lose points, of which this machine lost almost a hundred.
My respects, to whoever managed to program that much computing power, but the game of Go is there to sharpen the mind, rather than to play a game of scores.
Arawn
Do you hear what I hear, then you might be selling flowers too.
Well, there's a mistake, Go is not a Japanese strategy game. According to Wikipedia, Go originated in China, where it has been played for at least two thousand years.
The program took the most handicap stones allowed by the game... it cannot hang with any professional on even scale yet, although the win with 9H against an 8p player is still significant. I'd like to play it myself... I haven't seen any bot that could get over 6k yet.
I think this article is fantastic in the context of demonstrating the complexities and challenges the the on line gaming architects and engineers have when building a game to a standard that replicates originals and or exceeds client expectations.
Richard
www.handmadechess.co.uk