{"id":32,"date":"2020-08-10T10:21:38","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T14:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/?p=32"},"modified":"2020-08-24T12:08:25","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T16:08:25","slug":"ai-programs-that-play-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/08\/10\/ai-programs-that-play-games\/","title":{"rendered":"AI programs that play games"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One of the very best media items I&#8217;ve found is this feature-length documentary about the program that beat an international master at the game of Go in 2016. It&#8217;s excellent as a documentary film \u2014 well-paced, sparking curiosity, exciting in some parts, and never pedantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don&#8217;t need to understand anything about the game (which is immensely popular in China, Japan, and Korea, but not widely played elsewhere). It&#8217;s explained visually so that you can appreciate what&#8217;s going on. The film is free to watch on YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"AlphaGo - The Movie | Full Documentary\" width=\"739\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WXuK6gekU1Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As a resource for learning about AI \u2014 or, more specifically, about machine learning \u2014 the film excels at helping us understand the work of the team of humans that created and trained the AlphaGo program. We don&#8217;t see a lot of people sitting at computer keyboards, typing. There <em>are<\/em> clustered people pointing at a screen, talking enthusiastically, or saying, &#8220;What happened there? Why did it do that?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Probably my favorite moment in the film is after Lee Se-dol, the human Go master, has played a move that is so great, it was later referred to as &#8220;the God move.&#8221; The AlphaGo team begins analyzing the program&#8217;s responses in real-time, watching the graphs of its probability calculations on a large screen in their command center. For all the talk of AI as a black box that makes decisions humans can&#8221;t comprehend, this scene demonstrates that AI can be made transparent and accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s much, much more to love about this documentary. The director, Greg Kohs, had extraordinary access to the DeepMind team during the months leading up to the five-game  match with Lee. In the end, Google financed a general-audience-friendly film. (Google <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2014\/01\/26\/google-deepmind\/\" target=\"_blank\">acquired<\/a> DeepMind in 2014.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/news\/alphago-ringside-ai-greg-kohs-interview-deepmind-lee-sedol\/\" target=\"_blank\">an interview with CNET<\/a>, Kohs said the film &#8220;had very modest beginnings.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;A couple members of Google&#8217;s creative lab that I&#8217;d worked with before gave me a ring and said we&#8217;d have access behind the curtain with [DeepMind founder and CEO] Demis Hassabis and his team. So I jumped on board with the expectation we would just film what happens for archival purposes and then put it on a shelf on a hard drive and that would be the end of it.&#8221;<\/p><cite>Greg Kohs<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Another wonderful aspect of the film is its humanity. I&#8217;ve seen a fair number of &#8220;scare essays&#8221; that predict the end of everything as AI gains dominance over its creators \u2014 but here we hear a more nuanced and thought-provoking set of views and reactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, there is Lee, possibly the best (human) Go player who has ever lived, in closeup, in the very moment of his realization that the machine has bested him. Then there are the other Go experts, who understand more than you or I what the machine has actually done. Finally, there are the team members of DeepMind, who built the machine. Of course they are happy, ecstatically happy \u2014 but they are humbled, and even awed, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the end of 2019, Lee Se-dol <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2019\/11\/27\/20985260\/ai-go-alphago-lee-se-dol-retired-deepmind-defeat\" target=\"_blank\">retired<\/a> as a professional Go player, at age 36. He is the only human who has ever defeated AlphaGo in tournament play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More about AlphaGo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/deepmind.com\/research\/case-studies\/alphago-the-story-so-far\" target=\"_blank\">AlphaGo: The Story So Far<\/a> (DeepMind)<\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2016\/03\/two-moves-alphago-lee-sedol-redefined-future\/\" target=\"_blank\">In Two Moves, AlphaGo and Lee Sedol Redefined the Future<\/a> (<em>Wired,<\/em> March 2016)<\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/deepmind.com\/blog\/article\/alphazero-shedding-new-light-grand-games-chess-shogi-and-go\" target=\"_blank\">AlphaZero<\/a>, the successor to AlphaGo (DeepMind, December 2018)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"https:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/88x31.png\"><\/a><br>\n<small><span xmlns:dct=\"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/\" property=\"dct:title\"><strong>AI in Media and Society<\/strong><\/span> by <span xmlns:cc=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#\" property=\"cc:attributionName\">Mindy McAdams<\/span> is licensed under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<br>\nInclude the author&#8217;s name (Mindy McAdams) and a link to the original post in any reuse of this content.<\/small><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the very best media items I&#8217;ve found is this feature-length documentary about the program that beat an international master at the game of Go in 2016. It&#8217;s excellent as a documentary film \u2014 well-paced, sparking curiosity, exciting in some parts, and never pedantic. You don&#8217;t need to understand anything about the game (which&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/08\/10\/ai-programs-that-play-games\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">AI programs that play games<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[12,13],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-machine-learning","tag-alphago","tag-deepmind"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}