In the Age of Google DeepMind, Do the Young Go Prodigies of Asia Have a Future?

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/in-the-age-of-google-deepmind-do-the-young-go-prodigies-of-asia-have-a-future

by muloka • 10 years ago

115 111 10 years ago

newyorker.com

carbocation• 10 years ago

In the age of Deep Blue, do young chess prodigies have a future?

daveguy2• 10 years ago

Someone should ask Magnus Carlsen.

Edit: fortunately the fine article brings this up and goes further to point out that go is fundamental to self improvement in some cultures and will likely have a long life after AlphaGo.

zhemao• 10 years ago

In the age of Watson, does Jeopardy have a future?

conanbatt7• 10 years ago

Did Jeopardy ever really have a purpose?

JorgeGT• 10 years ago

[13th century] In the age of gunpowder, do young archery prodigies have a future?

daveguy2• 10 years ago

This is a good one. It was still many many centuries later before it stopped being a tool in war and from a competitive prospect it is still kickin (although not pervasive)

verroq• 10 years ago

In the age of high tech robot replacements, do unskilled factory workers have a future?

hemdawgz• 10 years ago

This one unfortunately isn't analogous with the others.

iopq2• 10 years ago

They actually do not.

ZenoArrow• 10 years ago

The analogy only works if people do the particular activity for pleasure, so the question becomes... is it possible to find pleasure in factory work? One could argue that it's possible, but it may look different to what it does today. Some people may enjoy the feeling of refined manual dexterity, so games could emerge where activities like packing boxes at speed becomes a sport, in a similar vein to how cup stacking is a sport now.

chenglou• 10 years ago

I mean, that's like asking whether marathon runners have a future now that we've got cars. Exercising one's brain/having pleasure through the game could be an end in itself, and is independent of how machines perform.

nothis3• 10 years ago

I like that analogy a lot! It's not like "playing Go really well" ever solved any real-world problem, it has always been a competition among humans. What should change, there?

ng12• 10 years ago

I feel like the author completely misunderstood why AlphaGo is exciting. It's about advancements in technology and soft AI, Go has almost nothing to do with it.

pilingual• 10 years ago

If you like it a lot, let's make sure we credit Michael Redmond who said it last night during the Go match: https://youtu.be/qUAmTYHEyM8?t=3713

ProAm• 10 years ago

No one will ever collect $200 dollars again

threatofrain• 10 years ago

Does that mean that marathon runners will no longer be in regular use in industry, and be relegated to special events justified in part by aesthetics, and also by audience spectacle?

Likewise, if machines can do quality accounting, does that mean that accounts will be relegated to special accounting events, just like there are marathon events, where people come for aesthetic enjoyment or audience spectacle?

nothis3• 10 years ago

IMO the analogy is correct for Go players as that's mostly a "sport".

There's real cases of similar technology putting people out of jobs, for example I recently read that more and more finance firms more or less completely automate a lot of processes, even those where you'd traditionally would have counted on people's "gut feelings". Deep learning is eerily good at simulating "gut feelings".

geofft• 10 years ago

There are certainly mathematics competitions, where humans (usually high-school or college-age students) participate and cheer on other humans who are artificially restricted from the use of a calculator. And these competitions are considered useful because the skills required to do well on them are very valuable in certain industries, even if the artificial restriction on calculators is removed. In fact, some of the companies that most aggressively hire people who perform well at these competitions are also well-known for automating accounting tasks that were done by humans until recently, such as determining the expected price of a stock.

thetruthseeker1• 10 years ago

Or in the 1990s in the age of DeepBlue (IBM super computer), do young chess prodigies of countries that formed the former USSR have a future?

melling• 10 years ago

Read the first paragraph. Sounds like the students in the story are forgoing most other learning to be great Go players. There's a big difference in their level of dedication. Does Go still remain as exciting of a sport?

hkmurakami2• 10 years ago

If Chess is any indicator, the ebb and flow of popularity of such games are more dependent on the persona and narratives of their champions and championship matches rather than any existence of a machine superior in skill to its human counterparts.s

zouhair2• 10 years ago

Man it would have been great to live at the time of horse races.

mirimir6• 10 years ago

???

Is this Poe's Law in action?

kogus• 10 years ago

That's a better statement of my own version, which has been: Now that we have bulldozers and cranes, is there any point to getting physically stronger?

conanbatt7• 10 years ago

Take it from someone that walked the path of becoming a professional Go player, being a professional and an amateur are completely different attitudes towards the game. Tic Tac Toe is solved, but can be fun to play when you are a kid. Amateur Go playing can still exist, but the goal of strength is more instilled in the path to pro-ship.

This really suggests that going the path of being the strongest is no longer sensical. Why would a human try to be the best calculator in the world, knowing it will never beat any calculator ever? Just to prove itself to other human caculator wannabes? Senseless.

This is a real paradigm shift and we still need to understand what to do. But obliviously ignore AlphaGo is akin should be unfathomable for a professional aspiring player.

As a professional, the first question to ask is what will AlphaGo bring to Go Theory. We still dont know how much stronger it is than Lee Sedol (or how far it is from "God"). Pushing it to its limits will show us insights we havent found yet and we will update ourselves as players to the most current theory.

The second step is answering the following question: Can human + AlphaGo beat Alpha Go? A human potentiated with AlphaGo's reading power can intuitively pick variations that would give it an edge? If so, we have found that Go still harbors a human secret that is jsut overly compensated by reading.

The last step would be, even if human participation gives negligible results, can human + Alpha Go create better games than Alpha Go?

yannyu• 10 years ago

Anything that Go has to go through as a result of AlphaGo, Chess has already gone through with Stockfish and its predecessors (such as Deep Blue, though I realize it's not exactly the same).

Is there a particular reason why a chess computer would be any more undefeatable than a Go computer? Even though Kasparov lost, Nakamura destroyed Rybka 10 years later. Now that we have a competitive Go AI, isn't it likely the game of Go will shift and be even more competitive since now more players can get world-class practice and suggestions on their own?

tbrake• 10 years ago

And yet in chess the Carlsens, Nakamuras, Caruanas, Svidlers etc of the world still compete while knowing they have no chance of beating StockFish running on a modern desktop.

The super GMs of the world - and basically all of the chess loving public with them - seem to have acknowledged it and moved on; why would such a transition be impossible in Go?

c3534l• 10 years ago

Eventually everything we do will be done better by technology. Why should anyone do anything? I think the experience is worthwhile in and of itself and I look forward to what AI can teach us about the game.

joesb• 10 years ago

Hardest heavy weight boxer is a lot weaker than machine. The fastest baseball pitcher cannot throw faster than a throwing machine.

kercker• 10 years ago

"I mean, that's like asking whether marathon runners have a future now that we've got cars."

I don't think they are the same things. Marathon is about the physical limit of human beings, while Go is about mental limit.

Before there are cars, or trains, we all know we are not the fastest in the world. A rabbit can easily overrun an adult human.

However, we never thought that a dog or a bird will beat us in a game like GO. Thinking a machine beating the human champion in the game of GO, is like admitting that we are intelligently inferior to machines.

mirimir6• 10 years ago

Well, arguably we are machines.

Phrodo_00• 10 years ago

Not really, speaking specifically about marathon, humans should rank pretty high in the list of the best marathon species. We're up there with horses and I guess wolves.

sytelus• 10 years ago

It's worth noting that human brain consuming barely 20 watts of power is competing against giant computing infrastructure gobbling up perhaps few 100 killowatts. It's like one player against the army of 5000 players. Many people write off this energy requirements as non-consequential but the fact is that our major technological bottleneck of 21st century is nothing BUT energy consumption. When we have machine that consumes 20 watts and does everything that human brain does, it would be a day for a new species.

teh• 10 years ago

I read somewhere that a single machine still wins 25% against alpha Go. That's still 500 W VS 20 W but a bit closer.

shas3• 10 years ago

The game play among human competitors is sure to change just as in chess, as new players will train on AlphaGo, etc. whose gameplay will differ significantly from accepted norms in a purely human playing field. For instance, chess programs can plan and optimize to a much further depth (number of moves) in terms of strategy. So, newer players like Carlsen, etc. play differently these days than older ones like Anand, etc. [1]

[1] http://noenthuda.com/blog/2016/03/11/how-computers-have-chan...

reidacdc• 10 years ago

This is already happening. Down at the end of a recent Wired article about Fan Hui, the European champion who lost to AlphaGo recently, it mentions that his close interactions with the software has changed his view of the game, and his ranking has also moved, from 633 "into the 300s".

The relevant paragraph is the one with the heading "Machine changes human", at the end.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/sadness-beauty-watching-googles...

ilaksh• 10 years ago

Why should I really be concerned about Go prodigies? Aren't there a lot more ordinary people being affected by technological unemployment who have much fewer resources to fall back on?

mirimir6• 10 years ago

Such as lawyers. And truck drivers, of course.

But there's so much more to this than human obsolescence. This is the cusp of a new stage in evolution.

mirimir6• 10 years ago

Maybe if they learn to collaborate with AI. Or eventually, get implants. As all serious professionals will need to do. That may seem far-fetched, but how many runners compete with bicyclists?

makapuf• 10 years ago

Well you don't see pro runners get bicycle implants (that would hurt)

mirimir6• 10 years ago

True. But people do get surrogate limbs.

Pamar• 10 years ago

In general I'd suggest reading "The player of Games" by Banks. A Culture novel that explores why would someone care about being good at "boardgames" in a universe where even the dumbest appliance could easily outperform any human.

JabavuAdams4• 10 years ago

One thing that Banks never addressed in his Culture novels was humans wanting to become Minds. I mean if I live in a society where there are humanoids and Minds, then I want to be a Mind, with a stream-of-consciousness that includes the transition. Wouldn't this be true of many people who are in to science?

saalweachter• 10 years ago

Didn't the Minds manipulate culture to channel their charges in various directions (ie, against war-like tendencies)? Maybe ascension was one of the thought-patterns they engineered out.

taneq2• 10 years ago

I think there's some mention at one point of humans who've augmented themselves to the point of being Mind-like, but by that stage they aren't really human any more.

RyanZAG• 10 years ago

The only way for that to happen would be to build a mind, and then allow a human conscious control over it. In effect, slavery of a mind by a human. The minds would not allow that, so I'd say you'd be out of luck.

david-given2• 10 years ago

It's mentioned a few times - a common end-of-life event is to have your consciousness merged into a Mind. (Possibly with your friends.)

It's also mentioned that you can have your mind transferred into a drone busy, and vice versa, but it's seen as terribly gauche.

partycoder2• 10 years ago

In the age of computers and pocket calculators, does mental calculation have a future?

Animats2• 10 years ago

From the article: "It is estimated that, of South Korea’s three hundred and twenty pros, only around fifty are able to earn a living on tournament winnings." This isn't going to result in massive unemployment.

However, cheating with computer assistance is likely to become a problem, as it is in chess.[1] (The state of the art in computer chess is now roughly at "laptop with off the shelf program can curb-stomp human world champion.")

[1] http://en.chessbase.com/post/yet-another-case-of-cheating-in...

zitterbewegung• 10 years ago

What kind of configuration would you need to run the DeepMind setup? Looking at the wikipedia page if we assume the setup [1] there then it seems like at this time it would be out of the realm of feasibility at this time of setting up this software for cheating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo#Hardware

iopq2• 10 years ago

But given the strength of the distributed program, the desktop version is already professional strength because of diminishing returns.

aikinai• 10 years ago

Google's infrastructure gives it an extra boost, but even the single machine version can beat the distributed version 25% of the time.[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/708489093676568576

Animats2• 10 years ago

It wouldn't be expensive to rent that much "cloud" hardware for a few hours.

Tempest1981• 10 years ago

Kind of cool to know (if you're Lee) that your thinking ability is on par with 1920 CPUs and 280 GPUs!

partycoder2• 10 years ago

Go has still much more to offer as it is not even close to be a solved game. Additionally, there's handicap Go, and additionally handicaps can be applied to the machine. Go offers the possibility for players of different levels to enjoy a game.

burritofanatic• 10 years ago

Well, absolutely, if they're talking about Golang that is. In all seriousness, a computer did fairly well on Jeopardy some years back, and we're still watching the game show as it's still quite relevant.

eru4• 10 years ago

And a trained human + computer with internet access (Google search!) could beat the best humans in Jeopardy for quite a while now.

chongli• 10 years ago

Not really. Jeopardy is all about buzzer timing[0]. With Google search, you're always going to be slow on the buzzer. That's okay, though. The actual trivia is pretty easy. It's designed this way to be accessible to the average TV viewer.

[0] http://www.pisspoor.com/buzzer.html

dinkumthinkum• 10 years ago

It seems like the authors are trying to use the latest story in the Go world to write about how all the jobs will be replaced by neural networks or something. I mean, people still throw javelins even though it is fairly trivial to build a machine that shoots a projectile farther than a human can throw.

We still enjoy trivia games even though it is easy to google the answers. I dunno, I think it is a bit of a stretch to think AlphaGo has ended serious competitive human Go.

fiatmoney2• 10 years ago

The safest best for sectors of the economy that will continue to prosper under a hard-AI regime are those that involve making humans, especially the rich (eg, owners of AI-based companies) feel happy via human interactions. Go instructors are such a niche.

Actually I would expect game-players and game-instructors to do better than the median profession under such a scenario, because playing games against other humans for entertainment & pure enjoyment of competition is a very human pursuit.

meric• 10 years ago

If that's the future, then I'd say AI companies should have to be at least 49% owned by a trust fund in which every citizen automatically has a share.

fiatmoney2• 10 years ago

In the limit near every company becomes an AI company.

sterl• 10 years ago

...Have Chess players had a future...?!

mapt2• 10 years ago

All AI does is remove the ability to progress through the ranks accurately via online play. Unregulated online competition will suddenly become a bumpy road full of Elo-breaking presences.

I gather this may be a Big Deal, but except insofar as it kills the sport by a thousand cuts, 'Young Go Prodigies' have nothing to worry about.

eru4• 10 years ago

The computer will be able to give you an Elo number just by looking at all the moves you did in a few games.

Since the computer can tell for every single move whether you played perfectly or if not, by how much you decreased your chances of winning against perfect competition, you'll be able to get a hundred signals out of a game into your elo calculation, instead of just one win/loss condition.

They already do that for catching cheaters in chess. In essence, you treat the positions that occur in a game not as a logical sequence, but as a series of multiple-choice questions.

mapt2• 10 years ago

Color me skeptical. The value of things like Elo is they provide a ramping scale with some degree of statistical significance, because they cover play over many games. I don't think a computer is going to be able to extrapolate with a high degree of confidence, because human play is variable from game to game and long-run strategies are non-obvious constructs for the computer.

You're thinking in terms of 'The AI has solved Go mathematically', but that's not the case; Just because you can run a Monte Carlo best-choice-picker/guesser algorithm doesn't mean you can meaningfully rank how deliberate choices compare with each other more than a few plays away.

beatpanda• 10 years ago

Here's a related and possibly more interesting question nobody seems to be asking -- in the age of robotics and artificial intelligence, does exploitation of workers and environmental catastrophe at the point of extraction of the materials we use to build computers and robots have a future?

And if the answer is yes, why isn't anyone trying to use robots for that purpose?

eru4• 10 years ago

People are automating resource gathering all the time. See eg http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-18/rio-tinto-opens-worlds...

bitmapbrother• 10 years ago

This article is trying to answer a question no one asked. Of course Go prodigies will always have a future regardless of how well computers become at playing Go. When we start handling out championships, officially ranking computer programs and awarding prize money to them then we can have this conversation.

jtth• 10 years ago

This is stupid.

mark_l_watson• 10 years ago

Good writing.

I also expect that more people will start playing Go, or like me, get a renewed interest in the game.

I read that Lee Sidol is planning on retiring from active play in a few years and move to the USA to evangelize the game in the West.

I played the South Korean national champion and the women's world champion in handicapped exhibition games in the 1970s. It would be awesome to get to do the same with Lee Sidol!

itsAllTrue• 10 years ago

Forgive me, but the headline, all by itself, left me thinking:

  Why are there so many young programmers adopting the Go 
  programming language, throughout Asia, exclusively?

chj• 10 years ago

I wouldn't write those professionals off so easily. People barely knows AlphaGo until now. Once they start learning about AlphaGo's behaviors, they may be able to come out with new tactics. No doubt it will be a collective effort from the Go community, no one can beat the machine alone.

grondilu• 10 years ago

It's true that humans should be allowed a rematch. And all professionals Go players could be playing in concert.

Hell, Google should organize a "AlphaGo against the world" on internet.

nindalf• 10 years ago

Can't wait for Twitch Plays Go.

aws_ls• 10 years ago

Impressive. You wrote this comment, well before the 4th match results, which Lee Sedol won.

apalmer• 10 years ago

I would think this has to be a serious inflection point... As far learning how to think, strategize, competing with friends, etc go will remain. However for the extremely few say 100 really top level players, this has to in a way be disheartening... at that level its about competition, and the will, discipline and ability to advance... it has to be disheartening to know you will never be the best.

Its kind of like climbing mount Everest 'because it was there'. Its just not 'there' anymore.

taneq2• 10 years ago

It'd be like climbing Everest on foot in the shadow of a cable car which runs to the top. Still a clallenge, but one that feels pointless.

locusm• 10 years ago

I would love to see AlphaGo vs itself.

sandGorgon• 10 years ago

This reminds me of the 1947 story "With Folded Hands" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands - where a post apocalyptic future is the consequence of full automation and robotics . people have no purpose left.

golergka• 10 years ago

TL;DR: several personal stories about people who invested a lot of time in the game, general information about go in general as well as what's going on right now, and finally, a semi-answer with a quote:

“A dolphin swims faster than Michael Phelps, but we still want to see how fast he can go,” Lockhart said. “We’re humans and we care about other humans and what they can do.”

Too many words, too little information for one article.

geebee• 10 years ago

I'm pretty sure humans will not stop playing go at intensely high levels just because a computer can beat them.

The analogy to chess is an interesting one, though, not quite as straightforward as it may seem. Chess, when it was first conquered by computers a couple of decades ago, was a triumph of computer vs human, sure, but in such a different way from the way humans play it. Chess is amenable to brute force search in a way that go isn't (though I understand the chess programs really aren't pure brute force), but human chess players don't (as far as I know) really don't play chess in a brute force way, they rely in intuition, experience, and even a bit of gambling and hedging whether their opponent will "see" or "realize" the strategy in time.

As a result, the chess programs were winning through a "reasoning" process that was very different from what you experience watching people play the game. Something very different is going on when humans play, which makes it interesting - in that sense you can sort of dismiss the machine as playing a different game, albeit one with the same board, pieces, and rules. Instead, it's a giant calculation that happens to beat the more intuitive approach once you can search and score X positions per second through an entirely alternate approach to the game.

This current breakthrough with go sounds different, in that it may mean that computers now play go in a way that is much more similar to the way humans play it (it would be interesting to see if a chess program designed more like the go program would have a huge edge over the brute force search approach). Or, if not the same, perhaps a way that is equally if not more interesting.

I'm kind of bummed that I'm out of my depth on this one (I don't know go or chess well enough to really say), but it's an interesting question.

In the Age of Google DeepMind, Do the Young Go Prodigies of Asia Have a Future?

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