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Comment by schaefer | Hacker News Reader

Lee Sedol retired in 2019 following his 2016 defeat by Alpha Go in a 5 round match. At the start of the match most people were confident an AI could never defeat a top human player at Go. By the end of the match, watching (arguable) world champ Sedol suffer lost game after lost game the story had changed dramatically. Sedol fans were championing his single win against the unstoppable AI.

We (hacker news) discussed Lee Sedol's retirement here: [1]

To active go players at the time, Alpha Go and Alpha Zero really were as shocking as the debut of Chat GTP was recently.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21649495

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This is correct history, but not the point TaupeRanger was trying to make (I believe).

I think their assertion is that the release of AlphaGo has actually made human Go players worse at the game, contrasted with chess where most agree that the introduction of Superhuman chess engines has elevated the (human) state of play.

But I don't think there is actually much evidence for that. I'm sure the introduction of AlphaGo did take the wind out of some players sails, who thought of themselves as superior to our best computers, but for everyone else it seems to have elevated the overall level of play just the same as the chess engines have done.

I don't think that AlphaGo has made players worse. My point is that there's no evidence that anything USEFUL or IMPORTANT has come from a system that has gotten so much hype (and cost ungodly amounts of money). If players aren't getting better (there's no evidence they are) or are quitting the game after playing, it's simply a net negative, along with DeepMind's other ventures.

Sorry, but this is just incorrect. Go players have gotten stronger over time overall [0][1], and AI discovered many new ideas that all top pros have incorporated into their game-play (idk how to give a source for this, it's just very well known in the Go community that the style of play changed drastically in response to AlphaGo, and absolutely everyone trains with AI these days).

[0]: "The sudden overall increase in agreement in 2016 also reinforces the belief that the introduction of powerful AI opponents has boosted the skills of professional players." https://ai.facebook.com/blog/open-sourcing-new-elf-opengo-bo...

[1]: https://www.goratings.org/en/

It's not incorrect. The fact that Go players have gotten stronger over 300 years of recorded data does not in any way show that AlphaGo has made players better. The fact that players are suddenly memorizing AI moves in 2016 and beyond also does not mean they're getting better. This system does not measure how good the players are. It measures how much they copy AI moves (which is rather convenient, since the article is written by AI researchers). The phrase you quoted is so hilariously worded that I initially thought it might be satire. Indeed it does "reinforce the belief" that AI has boosted the skills of players - apparently the researchers themselves are not immune to this "reinforcement of belief"!

> My point is that there's no evidence that anything USEFUL or IMPORTANT has come from a system that has gotten so much hype

Geez. We are talking about pebbles on a wooden plank. They are not even colourful!

Go is super cool game, but it is that. Just a game. We are not talking about curing cancer, or solving world hunger, or reversing climate change here. So by the very formulation a Go playing AI can be cool, or interesting, or promising. But could it really be useful/important with all-caps? It sounds like you have too high expectations here.

IT TAKES TIME to solve HUGE CHALLANGES.

The story with Lee Sedol gets even sadder when you look at his rankings chart: https://www.goratings.org/en/players/5.html He immediately lost his heart for the game even though he officially kept playing another three years.

I thought I knew the story. But I'd never seen this graph. Thank you for breaking my heart all over again, jart.

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