AlphaGo documentary

Highly recommended -- covers the matches with European Go Champion Fan Hui and 18 time World Champion Lee Sedol. It conveys the human side of the story, both of the AlphaGo team and of the Go champions who "represented the human species" in yet another (losing) struggle against machine intelligence. Some of the most effective scenes depict how human experts react to (anthropomorphize) the workings of a complex but deterministic algorithm.

Wikipedia: After his fourth-game victory, Lee was overjoyed: "I don't think I've ever felt so good after winning just one game. I remember when I said I will win all or lose just one game in the beginning. ... However, since I won after losing 3 games in a row, I am so happy. I will never exchange this win for anything in the world." ... After the last game, however, Lee was saddened: "I failed. I feel sorry that the match is over and it ended like this. I wanted it to end well." He also confessed that "As a professional Go player, I never want to play this kind of match again. I endured the match because I accepted it."

I wonder how Lee feels now knowing that much stronger programs exist than the version he lost to, 4-1. His victory in game 4 seemed to be largely due to some internal problems with (that version of) AlphaGo. I was told confidentially that the DeepMind researchers had found huge problems with AlphaGo after the Lee Sedol match -- whole lines of play on which it performed poorly. This was partially responsible for the long delay before (an improved version of) AlphaGo reappeared to defeat Ke Jie 3-0, and post a 60-0 record against Go professionals.

Wikipedia: ... Ke Jie stated that "After humanity spent thousands of years improving our tactics, computers tell us that humans are completely wrong... I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go."

In this video interview, Ke Jie says "I think human beings may only beat AlphaGo if we undergo a gene mutation to greatly enlarge our brain capacities..."  ;-)

Last year I was on an AI panel with Gary Kasparov, who was defeated by DeepBlue in 1997. (Most people forget that Kasparov won the first match in 1996, 4-2.) Like Lee, Kasparov can still become emotional when talking about his own experience as the champion representing humanity.

It took another 20 years for human Go play to be surpassed by machines. But the pace of progress is accelerating now...

Wikipedia: In a paper released on arXiv on 5 December 2017, DeepMind claimed that it generalized AlphaGo Zero's approach into a single AlphaZero algorithm, which achieved within 24 hours a superhuman level of play in the games of chess, shogi, and Go by defeating world-champion programs, Stockfish, Elmo, and 3-day version of AlphaGo Zero in each case.

Some time ago DeepMind talked about releasing internals of AlphaGo to help experts explore how it "chunks" the game. Did this ever happen? Might give real insight to scholars of the game who want to "touch the edge of truth of Go" :-)

With Kasparov in NYC

We were together on a panel talking about AI. I challenged him to a quick game of blitz but he declined ;-)  The moderator is Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital.

More Kasparov on this blog.

Kasparov on Fischer

Kasparov reviews Frank Brady's biography of Bobby Fischer. See also here.

NYBooks: ... I was hoping for a little more meat on the topic of the nature of prodigy and Fischer’s early development, beyond his own famous comment “I just got good”—but perhaps there is nothing more. The nature of genius may not be definable. Fischer’s passion for puzzles was combined with endless hours of studying and playing chess. The ability to put in those hours of work is in itself an innate gift. Hard work is a talent.

Generations of artists, authors, mathematicians, philosophers, and psychologists have pondered what exactly it is that makes for a great chess player. More recently, scientists with advanced brain-scanning machines have joined the hunt, looking for hot spots of activity as a master contemplates a move. An obsessive-competitive streak is enough to create a good squash player or a good (or bad) investment banker. It’s not enough to create someone like Fischer.

This is not meant to be a compliment, necessarily. Many strong chess players go on to successful careers as currency and stock traders, so I suppose there is considerable crossover in the pattern-matching and intuitive calculation skills required. But the aptitude for playing chess is nothing more than that. My argument has always been that what you learn from using the skills you have—analyzing your strengths and weaknesses—is far more important. If you can program yourself to learn from your experiences by assiduously reviewing what worked and what did not, and why, success in chess can be very valuable indeed. In this way, the game has taught me a great deal about my own decision-making processes that is applicable in other areas, but that effort has little to do with natural gifts.

Fischer’s brilliance was enough to make him a star. It was his relentless, even pathological dedication that transformed the sport. Fischer investigated constantly, studying every top-level game for new ideas and improvements. He was obsessed with tracking down books and periodicals, even learning enough Russian to expand his range of sources. He studied each opponent, at least those he considered worthy of preparation. Brady recounts dining with Fischer and hearing a monologue of the teen’s astonishingly deep analysis of David Bronstein’s openings before the two were to meet in the Mar del Plata tournament in 1960. No one had ever prepared this deeply outside of world championship matches. Today, every game of chess ever played, going back centuries, is available at the click of a mouse to any beginner. But in the pre-computer era, Fischer’s obsessive research was a major competitive advantage.

In his play, Fischer was amazingly objective, long before computers stripped away so many of the dogmas and assumptions humans have used to navigate the game for centuries. Positions that had been long considered inferior were revitalized by Fischer’s ability to look at everything afresh. His concrete methods challenged basic precepts, such as the one that the stronger side should keep attacking the forces on the board. Fischer showed that simplification—the reduction of forces through exchanges—was often the strongest path as long as activity was maintained. The great Cuban José Capablanca had played this way half a century earlier, but Fischer’s modern interpretation of “victory through clarity” was a revelation. His fresh dynamism started a revolution; the period from 1972 to 1975, when Fischer was already in self-exile as a player, was more fruitful in chess evolution than the entire preceding decade.

Fischer’s uncompromising approach had an even greater impact on the chess world than his results. I am not referring to any “special moves,” as often suspected by those unfamiliar with the game. It was simply that Fischer played every game to the death, as if it were his last. It was this fighting spirit that his contemporaries recall most about him as a chess player.

From the New Yorker

Louis Menand on Jack Kerouac and the Beats.

Garry Kasparov (audio) on Russia, Putin and Chess.

Kasparov retires

Garry Kasparov, the highest ranked chess player of all time, and certainly one of the game's greatest champions, is calling it quits at age 41. I have always found Kasparov to be a deep thinker, with interesting opinions on areas far beyond chess. It appears he will take an active role in Russian politics, perhaps even seeking elected office. The excerpts below are from his editorial in the WSJ, announcing his retirement.

"In the past few years I have spent a great deal of time writing a book series called "My Great Predecessors." Studying the development of chess ideas through the lives of the world's greatest players -- such as Emanuel Lasker and my old teacher Mikhail Botvinnik -- made me realize that chess has taught me a great deal about every aspect of life, and that it could do the same for others.

This analysis of chess history synthesized in my mind with my extensive experience of playing against computers. For over 50 years, back to the earliest days of computing, chess has been recognized as a unique cognitive battleground. The world watched my matches with "Deep Blue," "Fritz," and "Junior" as man-versus-machine competitions and a way to see how computers "think." To me they were also helpful in revealing how humans make decisions. These computers looked at millions of positions per second, weighing each one to find the mathematically best moves. And yet a human, seeing just two or three positions per second, but guided by intuition and experience, could compete with the mighty machines.

The nature of the decision-making process is little explored and I have become fascinated with the possibility of using my expertise to illuminate these questions. I am currently working on a book on how life imitates chess, that will be released this fall in America by Penguin. It examines the unique formulae people use in thinking and problem-solving. For example, the way hope and doubt affect how we process information, or the way we perform in a crisis. I hope it will also serve as a guide to improving these processes.

Over the past several years I have made a number of speeches on the topic of chess themes in life, particularly in business thinking and strategy. The response has been overwhelming and enlightening and I am extracting a number of valuable parallels. For example: the difference between tactics and strategy; how to train your intuition; and maintaining creativity in an era of analysis. In particular, the topic of intuition is intriguing. When I analyzed a 1894 world championship game between Lasker and Wilhelm Steinitz, I also looked at their post-game analysis and the comments of other top players of the day. They all made more mistakes in analysis than the players had made during the game! The intuitive decisions of the players during the game were correct in most cases, and more often so than when they had all the time in the world to analyze later.

The more time I spend exploring the limitless realm of human thought, the harder it becomes to contain my energy within 64 black and white squares. The huge amount of work required to stay at the top has led to diminishing returns both for me and for the chess world. Every year it takes more study time to keep up with my young competitors, who have all followed my methods of working ceaselessly with computers to prepare. Opening variations must be analyzed to depths of dozens of moves and you carry around a "mental database" of tens of thousands of moves that is constantly updated."