{"id":4115,"date":"2016-03-09T11:22:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T19:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=4115"},"modified":"2016-03-09T11:26:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T19:26:11","slug":"alphago-beats-lee-sedol-in-game-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/?p=4115","title":{"rendered":"AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol in game one"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am completely unqualified to talk about anything go-related, but still chess fans might relate to this news. In the first game of the match between AlphaGo (Google&#8217;s deep neural network-based AI) and Lee Sedol (generally considered the strongest go player in the world), the computer won by resignation. The <a href=\"https:\/\/gogameguru.com\/alphago-defeats-lee-sedol-game-1\/\" target=\"_blank\">commentary I read<\/a> suggested that Sedol had played a little bit unorthodoxly in the opening, had managed to come back to a roughly equal position, but then made a mistake and got ground down in the endgame.<\/p>\n<p>So many parallels to Deep Blue versus Kasparov, and also a few differences.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kasparov lost his first game in the 1996 match, but came back to win the match, 4-2. If anything, coming back is easier in go because there are no draws. (Draws, or <em>jigo<\/em>, are ultra-rare anyway, and ruled out by the match rules concerning <em>komi<\/em> &#8230; see below.) Will we see a repeat?<\/li>\n<li>On the other hand, Kasparov lost the second match in 1997 in part because he played very uncharacteristic openings, especially his disastrous Caro-Kann in game six. I hope that Lee Sedol will realize that there is nothing to be gained by departing from what he is comfortable with.<\/li>\n<li>The shock of go players is very reminiscent of 1996 and 1997. Sedol said in interviews afterwards that he was completely taken aback by the computer&#8217;s strength. Even when he was behind, he still thought he was going to win, but the computer absolutely gave him no opportunities.<\/li>\n<li>A big difference is the respect of both sides for each other. At least in their public statements. Instead of Kasparov&#8217;s bitter complaining that somebody must have been giving the computer moves behind the scenes, we have Sedol congratulating the programmers on their great accomplishment.<\/li>\n<li>For any go experts out there: is the <em>komi<\/em> too much? This is the margin that the Black player (who goes first) has to win by. From what I read, typical <em>komi<\/em> range from 4.5 points to 7.5 points. This match is at the high end, with 7.5 points. Sedol was actually ahead on the board and would have probably won by 2 to 5 points, but resigned because he could not see any way to win by 8 points. This is troubling, because Sedol\u00a0will play three games with Black, while AlphaGo is only playing two. The <em>komi<\/em> is supposed to even the playing field, but if it&#8217;s too high then it has just skewed the playing field in favor of AlphaGo.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Anyway, it&#8217;s fascinating to re-live history, and it will be interesting to see what the other four games have in store!<\/p>\n<p>By the way, if anybody wants to read my pre-match article about the Lee Sedol &#8211; AlphaGo match, you can find it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/2016\/03\/update-why-week-s-man-versus-machine-go-match-doesn-t-matter-and-what-does\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. I was pleased to hear that it is currently the most-read story on the Science magazine website!<\/p>\n<p>P.S. The editors&#8217; decision to capitalize &#8220;Go&#8221; throughout the article is a little bit unorthodox. It&#8217;s unfortunate that the name of the game is such a common English word. I guess it&#8217;s too late to start calling it &#8220;baduk&#8221; (the Korean name) or &#8220;weiqi&#8221; (the Chinese name).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am completely unqualified to talk about anything go-related, but still chess fans might relate to this news. In the first game of the match between AlphaGo (Google&#8217;s deep neural network-based AI) and Lee Sedol (generally considered the strongest go player in the world), the computer won by resignation. The commentary I read suggested that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1363,235,25,12],"tags":[3448,202,3465,1730,752,3464,3449,3462,3463,3453,3466],"class_list":["post-4115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-news","category-off-topic","category-people","category-tournaments","tag-alphago","tag-article","tag-baduk","tag-deep-blue","tag-garry-kasparov","tag-go","tag-lee-sedol","tag-parallels","tag-recap","tag-science-magazine","tag-weiqi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4119,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115\/revisions\/4119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danamackenzie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}