Life In 19x19

As a mathematician, I don't think calculators have degraded our capacity to think. They may have degraded our capacity to calculate, just like cars have degraded our capacity to run but enhanced our capacity to get somewhere.

In 1998 I made a private thesis in number theory, next to my official work. I was investigating a certain pattern. My initial hypothesis, based on insights in the lower number behavior was partly confirmed but also denied then refined, thanks to a program I wrote in Maple. I could have done the calculations by hand but I would have spent weeks to get where Maple got me in one day. I could spend those weeks instead on thinking about the theory that encompassed the larger number outcomes.

Galileo had a very rough insight in certain laws of physics, because he did not have algebra at his disposal. Today this is unthinkable but he really didn't have it and needed to formulate his thoughts in long sentences, which were overlapping. His energy was not well spent. Surely when algebra arrived there must have been a few romantics who lamented the lost art of formulating mathematical truths in long sentences. Today, millions of people can think on a higher level of abstraction than Galileo did, thanks to algebra. Of course, there are billions of people still dumber than Galileo was. Collective progress is not uniform.

I don't know what Alphago is going to bring us in terms of new insights in Go. I'm sure though that scientists will be able to crack formerly unsolvable problems with new data aggregations or even languages or other interfaces to the problem at hand, driven by new discoveries through AI. And still there will be lots of people who don't recognize a group in atari.

I just came across an article in Wired entitled The Sadness and Beauty of Watching Google’s AI Play Go - here is the link http://www.wired.com/2016/03/sadness-be ... i-play-go/

I found the part at the end about Fan Hui very interesting. He was able to improve his play from what he learned in the games against AlphaGo. I think that is encouraging.

But as hard as it was for Fan Hui to lose back in October and have the loss reported across the globe—and as hard as it has been to watch Lee Sedol’s struggles—his primary emotion isn’t sadness.

As he played match after match with AlphaGo over the past five months, he watched the machine improve. But he also watched himself improve. The experience has, quite literally, changed the way he views the game. When he first played the Google machine, he was ranked 633rd in the world. Now, he is up into the 300s. In the months since October, AlphaGo has taught him, a human, to be a better player. He sees things he didn’t see before. And that makes him happy. “So beautiful,” he says. “So beautiful.”

xed_over wrote:This doesn't sadden or depress me at all (though I can see how it would for some). It doesn't change anything for me. It will likely change the rules for tournament go somewhat. But I don't play competitively any more. I just simply enjoy the beauty of the game, and will continue to do so.

I may have to retract what I just said... when I saw people changing their Facebook profile pictures to Lee Sedol, I must admit, I got a bit emotional