The South Korean Go champion Lee Se-dol has retired from professional play, telling Yonhap news agency that his decision was motivated by the ascendancy of AI.
“With the debut of AI in Go games, I’ve realized that I’m not at the top even if I become the number one through frantic efforts,” Lee told Yonhap. “Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated.”
For years, Go was considered beyond the reach of even the most sophisticated computer programs. The ancient board game is famously complex, with more possible configurations for pieces than atoms in the observable universe.
This reputation took a knock in 2016 when the Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind shocked the world by defeating Se-dol four matches to one with its AlphaGo AI system. The games had a global impact, alerting the world to a new breed of machine learning programs that promised to be smarter and more creative than AI of old.
Lee, who was the world’s number one ranked Go player in the late 2000s, initially predicted that he would beat AlphaGo in a “landslide” and was shocked by his losses, going so far as to apologize to the South Korean public. “I failed,” he said after the tournament. “I feel sorry that the match is over and it ended like this. I wanted it to end well.”
Despite the outcome, Go experts agreed that the tournament produced outstanding play. AlphaGo surprised the world with its so-called “move 37,” which human experts initially thought was a mistake, but which proved decisive in game two. Lee made his own impact with his “hand of God” play (move 78), which flummoxed the AI program and allowed Lee to win a single game. He remains the only human to ever defeat AlphaGo in tournament settings. (During training AlphaGo lost two time-capped games to Go player Fan Hui.)
Since the tournament, though, DeepMind has only improved its AI Go systems. In 2017, it created AlphaGo Zero, a version of the program which surpassed even AlphaGo.
While the original AI learned to play Go by studying a dataset of more than 100,000 human games, AlphaGo Zero developed its skills by simply playing itself, over and over. After three days of self-play using hugely powerful computer systems that let it play games at superhuman speeds, AlphaGo Zero was able to defeat its predecessor 100 games to nil. DeepMind said at the time that AlphaGo Zero was likely the strongest Go player in history.
In a statement given to The Verge, DeepMind’s CEO Demis Hassabis said Lee had demonstrated “true warrior spirit” in his games with AlphaGo. Said Hassabis: “On behalf of the whole AlphaGo team at DeepMind, I’d like to congratulate Lee Se-dol for his legendary decade at the top of the game, and wish him the very best for the future ... I know Lee will be remembered as one of the greatest Go players of his generation”
According to Yonhap, Lee isn’t completely giving up on playing AI, though. He plans to commemorate his retirement in December by playing a match against a South Korean AI program called HanDol, which has already beaten the country’s top five players. Lee will be given a two-stone advantage.
“Even with a two-stone advantage, I feel like I will lose the first game to HanDol,” Lee told Yonhap. “These days, I don’t follow Go news. I wanted to play comfortably against HanDol as I have already retired, though I will do my best.”
Update: Comment from DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has been added to the story as well as clarification about players who have beaten AlphaGo in different settings.
Comments
Sorry to see him Go
By Jack Delgado on 11.27.19 8:45am
We are all GOing to lose anyways.
By pappu on 11.27.19 8:52am
Groans
Take your rec and get out.
By Sergei G. on 11.27.19 9:24am
This….this comment is what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving! Frankly!
By wosully on 11.28.19 10:49am
I understand why you would do this. At the same time, people didn’t give up weightlifting because machines are able to move more than we can. It’s just new that mental challenges can be defeated by technology as well as physical challenges. After the initial shock, I don’t expect many will follow suit by leaving the sport.
By Polycrastinator on 11.27.19 9:11am
For sure. Lots of people still play chess right?
By Tunnocks Tea Cakes on 11.27.19 9:16am
Stockfish defeats them all, but still loses against DeepMind’s AI.
By imVNC on 11.27.19 9:52am
I think it’s different for things that are perceived as tests of intelligence. Animals have always been stronger than the strongest humans, and even simple mechanisms like levers and pulleys that have existed for millennia demonstrate that machines have advantages over humans for physical tasks. People can still compete with for the trophy of strongest human, sure.
But humans have always maintained (or perceived, at least) superiority over all other things in existence in abstract intelligence, and we’ve used games like Go and chess to represent that. The fact that the world’s best human Go player is the best entity in existence at that game probably means something to the players who strive to achieve at its highest level.
I imagine that the idea that no matter how much you try or improve, the limitations of your physical neurology mean that you can never again credibly compete at the highest levels of this test of skill is probably a bit of an existential crisis for someone who has dedicated so much of their life’s work, and gained so much of their social prestige from it.
By Turbofrog on 11.27.19 10:03am
For him – definitely. But a new generation of players is going to grow up acknowledging AI’s superiority in the game and being motivated to play nonetheless, same as what happened for chess. This doesn’t mean much for the game overall other than maybe the development of some new techniques and strategies.
By paxys on 11.27.19 5:56pm
paxys, this has tremendous ramifications for Go. Just as it had tremendous ramifications for chess. Besides throwing out a lot theory based on human games, players will study alphago’s games instead of human games. Players will train by playing computers instead of playing human players. Today most analysis of chess games is done by the computer. And in the future so will Go games.
By mschribr on 11.27.19 9:18pm
Kind of different, strength has never been compared to other forms because man was never the strongest in the known universe.. let alone our own planet – so it was always a competition between ourselves.
As far as the mind, humans have been considered the most intelligent of the known universe – so we welcomed all challengers and now that day has come to an end – - which is shocking.
By EleMenTfiNi on 12.07.19 11:53pm
AI will continue on its exponential trendline, and is expected to reach human-level general intelligence in just 9 short years. Super-intelligence follows shortly afterwards. The Singularity is Nearer, but most people are oblivious.
By farrellj on 11.27.19 10:36am
9 years? Does that mean Alexa will actually listen to me then?
By scoob101 on 11.27.19 11:03am
That is Going to be a challenge even Amazon may not be able to succeed at.
By wubanger on 11.27.19 11:14am
The short time frame from AI scare-ers always blows my mind. I lose cell service over a hill, self-driving cars are slipping ever further away, and we still don’t have good battery tech. If an AI can play Super Mario though, we are doomed.
By LouisPiper on 11.27.19 2:07pm
generally these people don’t actually program and have no idea how these AI systems actually operate. our AI isn’t even smarter than an infant
By BenderIsGr34t on 11.27.19 4:56pm
BenderIsGr34t, Not smarter than an infant, really? I can ask google on my smartphone any question under the sun. Google will give me an answer. Can an infant do that? People don’t even realize they are using AI all the time with Google. LouisPiper, And by the way Waymo does have self driving cars. They ordered 80,000 cars. They just need to get up to scale.
By mschribr on 11.27.19 9:03pm
It’s easy to conflate "smart" with "lots of data". At this point AI is advanced pattern matching, nothing more. I’d be surprised if it’s comparable to a primative life form. Current "Smart assistants" are voice recognition (and amazing technology but not intelligent on its own) paired with AI that surmises the most likely scenario and spits out a response from a list of planned-for scenarios. I’m obviously simplifying but the point is there is no near AI takeover or even complex thinking.
By nos on 11.27.19 10:46pm
Exactly. This link mentions it but I don’t like that site or its lack of sourcing, but I don’t have time to find a proper source right now.
This Wired link is a nicer read.
Basically, these AI assistants have the intelligence of a 4-6 year old when it comes to general intelligence like common sense.
By Indefinite Implosion on 11.28.19 6:50am
Wait and see what happens when that 4-6 year old AI turns 7.
It’ll be like you cranked it up to 11.
By 13ivanogre13 on 11.28.19 5:12pm
You need to understand what the measure actually is before you can say with any confidence which entity is better at it.
If the measure is things like general intelligence, reasoning, or problem solving, Google is literally nowhere. However if its matching search results in a database…
By scoob101 on 11.28.19 2:50am
Yes it’s one thing to compare a single focused task (a computer can beat a human at many of them), but the human brain is incredibly complex overall. So tasked base vs general intelligence / problem solving is a big distinction.
By nos on 11.28.19 4:00pm
My calculator can add way larger numbers than an infant (or any other human) is capable of. That doesn’t make it smart or intelligent.
By paxys on 11.28.19 3:29am
nos, Every time a computer does a thing that requires intelligence, you say it’s not intelligence, it’s just a computer following an algorithm. But before the Go champion defeat, people did say beating a Go champion requires lots of intelligence. This is the AI effect. Which means AI are things the computer has not done yet. Once a computer does it, it’s not AI. What is your definition of intelligence?
scoob101, what you are really saying is only the human brain is intelligent. A computer can’t be intelligent because it’s not a human brain.
paxys, Then your calculator is not very intelligent. Because it is restricted to a narrow domain. It has intelligence of an elementary school student in the area of arithmetic. But not a lot of intelligence.
There are 2 reasons for the AI effect. A computer can’t be thinking because a human doesn’t think that way. Or because a computer can’t be intelligent because then a computer is more intelligent than a human. That’s not possible.
Something new from DeepMind, the creators of AlphaGo. MuZero learned to play chess, Go and Atari games by watching. Without being given the rules. One general learning algorithm learned to play many different games. Then play better than the strongest human player. More signs of high levels of artificial intelligence.
By mschribr on 11.28.19 10:52am
Obviously the definition of the term "artificial intelligence" is at the crux of this discussion and it inevitably always has to go there. I maintain that the term "AI" is overused and misleading, but there is incentive for it to be used because it is popular and sexy. I’m fine with being excited with current "AI" because it does solve real problems and has beneficial applications for real life.
The downside to the catch-all "AI" term is that it causes people to jump from one definition to another in their minds (which is understandable). This causes people to incorrectly predict AI advancements and imagine a future that isn’t yet predicted, simply because the understanding of current AI is incorrect. Any comparison between current AI and the human brain is not accurate.
Now the question is why should we make the definition of AI as being similar to a human brain. I’m not saying we should, but it is the natural comparison that we can use to measure "intelligence". It’s a starting point at least because the average person would frame it that way when thinking about whether something is intelligent.
By nos on 11.28.19 4:09pm