The world go champion after the match with AlphaGo will never play with the computer again

Debriefing during the game from the professionals



In the first game of the go match, the AlphaGo computer system, developed by DeepMind staff, defeated the strongest player in the world, Go Ke Jie . The champion from China said earlier that he considered it possible to replay the computer. But so far he has failed to do it . Four hours and 15 minutes after the start of the match, the 19-year-old master of go was forced to admit defeat. Now the score is 1-0 in favor of the computer.



The head of the company DeepMind said that now with the champion played an updated system, the architecture of which has been significantly modified. Thanks to this, AlphaGo is constantly learning, and, most of all, learning happens when you play with yourself. So the system now depends much less on the information on the results of the matches of champions-people. In theory, the platform from DeepMind can learn almost everything, not only the game of go.





In January of this year, AlphaGo fought the strongest players in a series of online matches. The developers have chosen a simple and clear nickname for their system - Master. By the way, among the champions of go in this January online match was Ke Jie, his system then also beat, like all the other masters of go.

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Now the platform is developing success, defeating the champion in the first battle without any problems. Of course, this game can’t be called simple, but the computer uses any opponent’s mistake to its advantage. Ke Jie decided to play black at the beginning of the match. This, in contrast to chess, means the ability to make the first move. He began confidently using the 3–3 point strategy that the computer itself used in January. This is quite an unexpected start, which would surprise and confuse almost any human player. But AlphaGo is not a man, so there was practically no confusion.



Developers, by the way, claim that Jie used many of the strategic computer finds that were recorded at the January match. “He (Ke Jie, ed.) Uses a large number of moves Master,” - said the match commentator Michael Redmond, talking about the features of the game champion. But it did not help. After just three and a half hours, it became apparent that the computer dominated the playing field. It was also clearly visible that the system plays even better than during the match with Lee Sedol .





Interestingly, after AlphaGo began to win one and all in the online championship, few people have already expected to win a man. Only half a year ago, there were much more confident in the victory of Tse.



System developers say that now it uses resources much more efficiently. It is known that in the battle the system used 10 times less resources than in the match with Lee Sedol. The basis of AlphaGo is TPU , a custom processor from Google.



The preponderance of the match was small - AlphaGo became the champion only thanks to half a point. However, the leadership of the system was, as mentioned above, very noticeable. At the end of the match, Tse began to make several strange moves that did not give him any advantage. Perhaps this was done in order to gain time. But still, by the end of the game, the champion had only 13 minutes to think about his moves, while the AI ​​had about one and a half hours left.



Ke Jie, who had previously defeated Sedol, said he would win. But now his opinion has changed. Almost immediately after the match, he said that he was no longer going to play alone against the AI.



But it was only recently that it was very difficult to play a game for a computer if not available. Here you need to play with a fairly high level of abstraction, to anticipate possible moves of the enemy. In this case, the combinations of moves in go are greater than the number of atoms in the entire Universe.







Experts say that the version of AlphaGo, which is playing now with the Chinese champion, can give three stones for the version of the version that was played with Lee Sedol. All the experts who followed Ke Jie’s play agreed that he simply had no chance against the computer. Perhaps, by the way, a half-point advantage is just the desire of the creators of AlphaGo to add drama. If the system had broken the champion to pieces in the very first couple of hours, the spectacle would not have happened.



The battle with Tse took place at the feast day , which takes place from May 23 to May 27 in China, the city of Wuzhen, Zheqiang province. Alpha Go does not play against one person, but participates in several stages of the competition, including the following:

• “Pair Go” is a game where one of the go champions from China will play against the other ... Everything is traditional, except that both will have their own partner AlphaGo. It is expected that in this format the computer and the person will be able to learn from each other;
  
  
  
  
• “Team Go” is a competition in which five pros will play against AlphaGo. Professionals will try to beat the system by examining the features of its game. They are allowed to discuss the moves between themselves. The team includes, in addition to the computer, Shi Yue, Chen Yaoe, Mi Uting, Tang Weihing and Zhou Ruyang;
  
  
  
  
• “Ke Jie vs. AlphaGo” is perhaps the central element of the whole go festival. Two champions will fight in it - a computer and a man.

Ke Jie believes that the computer technologies of the go game will be improved, so there is simply no point in fighting the computer in the future - the car will win.



One of South Korean professional players Mok Chinsok agrees with him: “We are waiting for 2 and 3 more games of the AlphaGo match with Qie Jie, but Lee Sedol will probably be the last person on Earth who managed to beat AlphaGo”.