AlphaGo - The Movie
Hiyo from Bangkok!
AlphaGo - The Movie
This weekend, I got a chance to watch AlphaGo - The Movie. As a researcher who is interested in Artificial Intelligence and an amateur Go player, I wonder what took me so long to watch this documentary. Maybe it was the pang of loss when Lee Sedol lost to AlphaGo four years ago. I think every Go player felt it then. I am glad that I finally get to watch the documentary.
The documentary tells a gripping story of the fights between AlphaGo, an AI computer program, and Lee Sedol, the world champion. Go was a complicated ancient board game that requires multiple layers of strategic thinking. Up to that point, the best a computer program could do was winning amateur Go players. Many expected Lee Sedol to win all five games. He lost 4-1.
One could view AlphaGo's victory as a forewarning of the AI apocalypse. It is not. The tournament yields great moves from both AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. If our ultimate goal is gaining a deeper understanding of Go over who wins against whom, this is a great outcome.
AI programs like AlphaGo and its stronger cousin, AlphaGo Zero could be great thought "partners". (Arguably, they are just tools but we have a tendency to anthropomorphize our devices, eh?). In a 2005 freestyle chess tournament where humans or computers program could form a team, the winner was a team of low-ranked amateur players with three off-the-shelf computer programs, beating the strongest AI player. Collaboration between humans and machines bolsters each other and creates stronger teams.
Hybrid human-AI teams are not limited to deterministic domains like Go and Chess. We have already seen examples in domains like writing and health care. Expect to see more as we apply AI to more domains and learn how AI and people work together.
After his match with AlphaGo, Lee Sedol continued to dominate the Go professional world. He retired in 2019 citing that he could not beat an entity that cannot be defeated. This doesn't mean he has given up playing Go. As Fan Hui said in the documentary, with a strong emotionless opponent, what you see is yourself.
AlphaGo - The Movie is free to watch on YouTube. It was 1 hour and 30 minutes long. If you are curious about AI, it is worth it. :)
Fun-finds
Colorized videos of cities around the world 100 years ago: New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Beijing, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin
With how divided Thailand is right now, I am looking for a way to help people with different perspectives talk to each other. Here is one example. Socialists meet capitalists. If you guys have any other examples/platforms, please let me know!
Until next time!