Young Korean pro Kim Eunji banned for 1 year for AI cheating

dust · **#61**

Basing a decision on fans' and spectators' reactions would unfairly turn it into a popularity contest.

Javaness2 · **#62**

I wonder they cheated so blantantly. Is it unreasonable of me to suspect that they simply wanted to be caught and punished?

Personally, I would find a catch the cheater event to be much more interesting. Have 6 players play a round robin tournament. In each round, one is assigned the cheater-role. The aim is to find out which player cheated. After each round the audience votes for who they think the cheater is. Those who vote correctly are allowed to live. Those who vote incorrectly are sent to the Vortex of the Rangdo.

Mike Novack · **#63**

Just to bring another game into it, consider the Reese-Sshapiro matter in bridge (1965). At the time I was playing a littlew tournament bridge, had a few "red points", and met a few of the world's top players across the table (will always remember the thrill of getting a good result against Kay-Kaplan).

Bill Spight · **#64**

Javaness2 wrote:

I wonder they cheated so blantantly. Is it unreasonable of me to suspect that they simply wanted to be caught and punished?

They were kids.

Bill Spight · **#65**

Mike Novack wrote:

Just to bring another game into it, consider the Reese-Sshapiro matter in bridge (1965). At the time I was playing a littlew tournament bridge, had a few "red points", and met a few of the world's top players across the table (will always remember the thrill of getting a good result against Kay-Kaplan).

At my first US Nationals I played against Kay-Kaplan.

Ferran · **#66**

Just to clear my head:

Is it just me or have we gone from "dismissal from the organization is way too harsh for a teen" to "well, if you really think 1 year is too much..." somewhere? And I don't mean in these last examples, but much earlier.

Thanks. Take care.

tapir · **#67**

I am kind of confused that no one makes the case for her innocence. Afaik korean professionals questioned her on the back of "AI move" percentages below what many on this forum happily defended in mid-dan amateur players.

https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15538

Of course with the culprit being a teenager and less of "good faith advocates" around Koreans actually got a confession.

Punish often, punish lightly.

RobertJasiek · **#68**

tapir wrote:

I am kind of confused that no one makes the case for her innocence.

Initially, I did question her guilt. For going further and advocating her innocence, I lack information. Meanwhile, we have firm statements of her admitting AI usage. Since she is still a child / teenager, it is a principle possibility that she might have been pressed to admit that while not exactly understanding exactly what she admitted or being convinced to adopt a guilt role voluntarily as the allegedly best still available option to her. Others might have applied so much pressure that she might have confused AI usage for study with AI usage during the particular game etc. However, with the currently available information to us English readers, such are merely theoretical possibilities. It bounces back to the reported firm statements of her admitting AI usage.

Ferran · **#69**

tapir wrote:

I am kind of confused that no one makes the case for her innocence. Afaik korean professionals questioned her on the back of "AI move" percentages below what many on this forum happily defended in mid-dan amateur players.

I can't speak for others, but, myself, I'm not commenting on guilt / innocence because I simply don't know. And then I'd have to focus on "she started denying then, under pressure...". If I start thinking on Eastern peer pressure and teenagers I'll go ballistic.

On this subject, there's an English commentary by Yeonwoo 2p on this. TLDR, she leans towards a 3-y suspension.

Take care.

explo · **#70**

I missed the start of the debate, but so far I've agreed with all of jlt's posts. Maybe it's because we're both teachers. If every student I've caught cheating got a definite ban from school it would cause a mess.

One thing that I haven't seen mentionned and that I would be worried about is that setting the first case to a definite ban would set the bar quite high for later, unclear cases. What do you do when you think someone cheated but you're not really sure? Do you ban them for 10 years, just in case? Pros studying hard with IA will not make every case easy.

Kirby wrote:

And as a pro go player, if anything is worth being fired for, cheating in a for-cash tournament seems a good candidate. It amounts to stealing money from the sponsors.

I can see how it amounts to stealing money from your opponent but I fail to see how it steals money from the sponsors. The sponsors pay the same amount of money regardless of cheaters. I also think that at 13 year old people cared more about winning than about the prize money.

SoDesuNe · **#71**

John Fairbairn wrote:

Quote:

But being fired by the only organisation who can actually employ you is quite a bit harsher than your average job loss.

But Kirby's example was "Insider trading may be an example of a "fire-able" offense in a company outside of the go world. " That's not an average job loss.

How about this for a compromise? Instead of disqualification for one year, you get disqualified totally, but have the right to reapply for membership after one year. The re-application is then dependent on what the rest of the membership feels, which will reflect one year's more information about the remorse shown by the cheater, one year's more worth of fans' and sponsors' reactions, and one year's more information about the scale of the cheating problem.

Actually I did google before and did so again right now: As far as I can tell insider trading does not mean you can never work in the financial sector ever again. Sure, there are consequences and I'm all for consequences. They just should be thought through and the first thing to think about should be prevention of further offenses (on an individual level and on a "collective" level).

That's also one of the reason I wouldn't trust masses to judge on a person's sentence (and certainly not when it comes to potential competition). For one thing putting the masses in a sitation to pass DOWN judgement and therefor elevating their position is not really to my cynical self's liking. For another reason, as per your choice of words "what the rest of the membership feels", "remorse shown by the cheater" and "fans' and sponsors' reaction": Drama does not really benefit a legal process as emotions are a really fickle thing. A "judge's" change of heart cannnot change a legal sentence.

As for the innocence of the player: I'm actually more interested in how cheating in go will be perceived and handled. Nevertheless I think the tempory ban was the right move from the pro association.

Uberdude · **#72**

A problem I see with removing her pro qualification and then allowing her to retake the pro exam later is that (assuming she wasn't always cheating and is a strong new pro) she is very likely to pass the test (even if banned from KBA she can still play and practice and improve online) so reduces the limited number of spaces for the rest of the cohort. So do you increase the number of new pros allowed that year? Or every 3 years there is one extra place for reapplying banned players and they can't play in the normal cycle?

As for her guilt/innocence and the quality of the evidence against her, there was some discussion of that on reddit for several days before I posted here after the new information that she apparently admitted cheating. I wasn't much impressed with the touted evidence of high matching against AI: if the KBA can't manage to organise a mouse which doesn't trigger a touchpad how can they be trusted with the much harder task of rigorous statistical analysis?

Yeonwoo just made a video on it. https://youtu.be/EVHWoZ98PTU

tapir · **#73**

Ferran wrote:

I can't speak for others, but, myself, I'm not commenting on guilt / innocence because I simply don't know.

Well, there is a confession. And the confession exists only because Korean professionals had none of the concerns vented in this community when faced with a cheater in the European Team Go Championship. They acted on far less information as far as I understand.

Kirby · **#74**

Ferran wrote:

On this subject, there's an English commentary by Yeonwoo 2p on this. TLDR, she leans towards a 3-y suspension.

Since you're summarizing this 17-minute video in a TLDR, I feel compelled to add context. Namely, I watched the Korean version of her announcement when it first came out:

At 15:55 in the video, she very clearly says that Kim Eunji should be unconditionally expelled (무조건 제명, which is *unconditionally* expelled/fired/dropped out). *Otherwise* (ie. if that's not working), a 3-5 year ban at minimum. In the English translation, she just mentioned that she advocates at least a 3 year ban. But given the context of the original Korean video, I believe that this really is a minimum - she mentioned kicking her out, first. Maybe she had a change of heart or played with the wording in the translation - but I think it's inaccurate to say that a 3 year suspension is exactly the punishment she'd opt for.

explo wrote:

Kirby wrote:

And as a pro go player, if anything is worth being fired for, cheating in a for-cash tournament seems a good candidate. It amounts to stealing money from the sponsors.

I can see how it amounts to stealing money from your opponent but I fail to see how it steals money from the sponsors. The sponsors pay the same amount of money regardless of cheaters.

The sponsors pay prize money to the winner of the tournament for *playing go* - not for copying moves from an open source AI. Tournaments have rules, and you get prize money in accordance to those rules. If some non-go player barges into the next Samsung cup and steals the prize money without actually playing any games, the sponsor still dishes out the same amount of money... But it's still stealing, is it not?

explo wrote:

I also think that at 13 year old people cared more about winning than about the prize money.

Clearly not by her own ability...

Kirby · **#75**

Uberdude wrote:

I wasn't much impressed with the touted evidence of high matching against AI: if the KBA can't manage to organise a mouse which doesn't trigger a touchpad how can they be trusted with the much harder task of rigorous statistical analysis?

I agree with this. Generally speaking, I don't think we are very good at detecting AI with enough accuracy right now. But that's another reason I personally believe that the punishment should be steep when we *are* certain of the cheating. From a game theoretical perspective, if someone has no morals, the value in cheating is: ChanceOfNotGettingCaught*ValueOfUsingAI + RiskOfGettingCaught*NegativeValueOfPunishmentForUsingAI.

Basically, if there's low punishment for using AI and you don't have other moral standards, there's greater incentive to cheat. Since we aren't good at controlling the risk of getting caught, yet, this is the only variable we can do something concretely about.

Uberdude · **#76**

Are we even sure she did cheat? False confessions happen, particularly if you are promised or even suspect or are advised by your parents/coach that doing so will get you a lighter punishment (e.g 1 year ban) than maintaining innocence and then harsher punishment (lose pro or life ban) if found guilty later.

Uberdude · **#77**

Kirby wrote:

Since we aren't good at controlling the risk of getting caught, yet, this is the only variable we can do something concretely about.

Where was she when she played the game? At home? If so was she required to record herself? In the KBA it's surely harder, but not impossible, to cheat.

Kirby · **#78**

Uberdude wrote:

Are we even sure she did cheat? False confessions happen, particularly if you are promised or even suspect or are advised by your parents/coach that doing so will get you a lighter punishment (e.g 1 year ban) than maintaining innocence and then harsher punishment (lose pro or life ban) if found guilty later.

Of course it's possible that the confession is false, but I doubt it. Kim Eunji's mom didn't really think it was a big deal, and was asking if she could get off with just apology + cleaning the bathrooms for a month (without the 1 year ban).

So if someone is inducing her to make a false confession:
1. It's pretty darn coincidental that Kim Eunji's moves line up so well with AI - a lot better than anybody else in the world
2. Whoever is persuading her is probably not her mom!

SoDesuNe · **#79**

Kirby wrote:

Since we aren't good at controlling the risk of getting caught, yet, this is the only variable we can do something concretely about.

Sure we can. Suppose we do a life-time-ban for every cheater. What if you still found people cheating? Would you seek even harsher sentences? You surely can't back down now, can you?

Maybe the whole pro scene would even change: One mistake could end years of training and with no real alternative to fall back on. Since most pros have to start young, I can imagine parents deciding against this career option for their children.

Or even facing the stress of cheating allegations. Might end up baseless but in the meantime your whole life can flash before your eyes. And knowing the internet: Will you actually ever been cleared?

What was the goal again?

If the goal is actually to prevent cheating or to come across as being able to handle the situation (because I don't think you can totally prevent cheating)... careful, broken record incoming... start looking at a sport who dealt with this for a wee bit longer: Beer pong!

Kirby · **#80**

I don't think I've seen the apology letter posted here, yet. I found an image here: http://mlbpark.donga.com/mp/b.php?p=61& ... jXGY-ALmlq

Not sure how long it'll stay up, so I transcribed it, with a rough translation:

Kim Eunji wrote:

안녕하세요 김은지 입니다.
이영구 사범님과의 온라인 대국중에 이것저것 클릭해보다가 홈이열렸는데 제 바둑이 나와서 아무생각없이 참고를 보았습니다.
제가 너무 이기고 싶은 마음에 순간적으로 잘 못된 선택을 했습니다.
그 후에 사범님들과 엄마가 물어보셨지만, 너무 겁이 나고 무서워서 솔직하게 말씀드리지 못했습니다.
제 잘못에대해 정말 많이 반성하고 있습니다.
국대에서 평소에 저한테 너무 잘해주신 이영구사범님께 정말 죄송합니다. 이영구사범님은 오히려 저를 걱정하고 계신다는 엄마 말씀을 듣고 정말 더 죄송했습니다.
저를 많이 아껴주신 국대 감독님과 코치님 마음을 아프게해서 정말 죄송합니다.
이렇게 큰 물의를 일으켜 프로기사 선배님들께도 정말 죄송합니다.
저를 여러 가지로 도와주신 분들과 바둑사이트 쪽지로 항상 응원해주신 분들께 실망시켜 드려서 정말 죄송합니다.
그리고 바둑을 사랑하시는 바둑팬 분들께도 정말 죄송합니다.
이번일을 계기로 앞으로는 절대 이런 행동을 하지 않겠습니다.
제 잘못에 대해 주시는 벌을 받고, 기회가 주어진다면 지금보다 더 열심히 공부해서 한국바둑에 큰 도움이 될 수 있는 김은지가 되겠습니다.

김은지 올림

Hi, this is Kim Eunji.
During my online match with Lee Younggu, I clicked here and there and the homepage opened up, and my Go game popped up and I looked at the (AI) reference without thinking.
I wanted to win too much, so in the moment, I made the wrong choice.
Teachers and my mom asked about it after that, but I was too scared to tell you honestly.
I am really self-reflecting on what I did wrong.
I'm really sorry to Lee Younggu, who has always been so good to me (in Kukdae). I was even more sorry to hear from my mom that Lee Younggu had been worrying about me.
I am very sorry that I broke the hearts of the Kukdae coaches and supervisors who cared for me a lot.
I am very sorry to the other professional go players and my seniors for causing such a big controversy.
I am very sorry to disappoint the people who helped me in various ways and to those who always cheered me on with messages via the Go website.
And I'm really sorry to all of the Go fans who love Go.
Taking this as an opportunity, I will never do this in the future.
After receiving punishment for my mistake, if I’m given another chance, I’ll become a person who studies harder than I have up until now and be a big help to Korean Go.

Posted by Kim Eunji

Young Korean pro Kim Eunji banned for 1 year for AI cheating

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