Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Thats not true. Go is a game where the safety of the lead is more important than the amount at all times, and its taken into account strategically all the time.

What alphago showed however, is that once in the lead it made mistakes: small mistakes that didnt jeopardize the game, but lost the lead. If all paths lead to rome, it doesnt matter which is shorter. Humans however, always think of the best after safety.

What was terribly cruel to see as a Go player was the computer playing poorly early on: showing that it already knew it was going to win.



Modern chess engines take a lot of effort to hide this problem. For example, an engine might know from a table that it can win a king+rook vs king+pawn endgame, and then throws away its second rook to reach such a position.

Humans using the engine don't like this however, and so the authors build in heuristics to make it play more "humanly". Things like using scores for positions, rather than "chance of winning" is also largely for the sake of the users.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: