Page 29 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 3 Issue 2 Spring

Whilst Go has just two rules, there are more possible board configurations than atoms in the universe. In a chess program, the tree search schema and value policy per chess piece can map all the hundreds of thousands of possible combinations in seconds to quickly select the best possible and most strategic move. AlphaGo does not have this option. At any point, Go has far too many possible board positions to map out completely, and therefore artificial Go-playing programs cannot rely on the brute force manner in which a chess move could be solved.
Neural networks and deep learning have, however, changed the way programs such as AlphaGo play the games they are taught. Instead of searching through every branch of possibilities in its catalogue, AlphaGo improves on its mistakes using reinforcement learning and backpropagation to improve its understanding of the game. And the greatest advantage of the computer is that it never tires – with AlphaGo playing 300+ million games against itself in a matter of days, each time making incremental improvements on its gameplay strategy.
The result of this tireless and near-unlimited learning capability is what Lee Sedol and other champions have likened to a Go god. Whilst most Go players replicate
1.6 THE SINGULARITY
In mathematics, a singularity is a point at which the normal logic of mathematics breaks down and an object does not behave in the manner that is typically expected. As the simplest example of a singularity, when the x in the function f (x) = 1∕x is equal to zero, the answer cannot be defined. This is because when x = 0, the function’s outcome seems to explode to an undefined state where the result must be something close to positive or negative infinity. In physics, a singularity can theoretically occur in a similar manner, most commonly exemplified in the physics related to black holes. Karl Schwarzschild
a style passed on by masters or craft their own through the adaptation of well-known strategies, AlphaGo had strayed from the path. During the epic battle with Sedol, there were times when expert commentators were left confused by wholly unconventional moves that looked almost ridiculous at the time, but in hindsight were unbelievably intricate in a far-reaching strategy that was almost unimaginable to human minds. It was these moments and the humbling defeat Sedol experienced
The result of this tireless
and near-unlimited learning
capability is what Lee Sedol and other champions have
likened to a Go god.
that prompted him to say that not only had a computer opened his eyes to a new way of Go, but even a new way of life. And perhaps the most astonishing thing is, AlphaGo’s gameplay has been surpassed by a new version of itself – AlphaZero – which in a hundred game match beat its predecessor 100-0.
THE SINGULARITY
defined this in his famous Schwarzschild radius equation in 1916, where every object with mass possesses a physical parameter corresponding to the event horizon of a black hole. According to this equation, any object with a physical radius smaller than the Schwarzschild radius, whilst maintaining the same mass, would create a situation where everything in between these two parameters would be unable to escape, as the gravitational pull towards the object’s centre would exceed the speed of light. In this scenario, not even light would be able to escape the Schwarzschild radius – creating a black hole.
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