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Some philosophical questions about computers and Go
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Please feel free to answer a question, pose a new one, rant about the author, etc.

How long will it be until a computer is clearly the Go champion?

  • will Moore's Law hold for the next 50/100/200 years?
    • It's proven very difficult to figure out what Moore actually said, since he's misquoted in so many different ways. So to answer this without reference to Moore's Law: Computers will continue to improve at surpising and impressive rates forever, not just for the next 200 years; the rate of improvement probably cannot be estimated beyond the next two years.
      • Moore's original paper (from 1965) is available at [ext] http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/moorespaper.pdf. It expresses what was later called his law in terms of number of components per IC, but subsequently it became more common to measure the linear feature size, or just "speed" instead. The speed increase has been a factor of 2 every 18 months, ever since the 1970s (it was faster than that during the 1960s) and it is generally believed that this rate will persist for the near future. However, in a fairly recent (1990s) video, Moore predicted that the ultimate limiting factor in the rate of semiconductor improvements will not be physical or technical, but economic: the cost of semiconductor manufacturing plants is growing exponentially. That is not currently a problem, as demand is growing too; but if the world's appetite for faster silicon continues at this rate, then the amount we spend on semiconductors will equal the global GDP by some time in the 2020s. So I believe that Moore's Law as we know it will not apply for the next 50/100/200 years, because we will not be able to afford it. -- Gary?
  • when a computer becomes the 19x19 champ, will a person still be able to beat it at 39x39?
    • I hate to think how much importing a 39x39 goban from Japan will cost! And where would I play it?
    • 19x19 has features beyond mere scale; it is unique among candidate board sizes (NxN, where N is an odd number) in that it is closest to the point where territory on the third line and below is equal to territory on the fourth line and above. Any different size would change this balance and hence upset the quality of play. -- Bignose
      • Sorry, I don't buy this theory! If B only plays on the third line and W only plays on the fourth line, then B wins by 15 points.
Bill: And Black makes 8 more plays than White. (Pointed out by Fujisawa Hideyuki, IIRC).
    • If they are playing on a 21x21 board, then W wins by 17 points. The two boards are about equidistant from this fabled point. In any case, I see nothing special about the third and fourth lines. Go is undoubtedly a deeper game the larger the board, and historically the standard board has kept growing in size. The limiting factor is probably the time needed to make all the moves, which of course grows quadratically. -- Saesneg

If a computer becomes champ, will Go still be interesting?

  • unlike chess, people could still play handicap games
  • we could decide "against God, I would need four stones."
  • computers have "solved" many other games that people still find interesting to play against one another
    • Checkers being a prime example.
  • the methods used by computers to beat humans are usually uninteresting to humans (brute-force problem-space searching) who will still want to improve their own play
  • For me the interesting aspect of having an invincible computer would be to observe games of an even higher quality than professionals achieve. Not that I understand those either. I would like to read games of Invincible v. Invincible, commented by professionals. But I think there is little chance of such a machine in our lifetimes. -- Saesneg
  • For all those people like me, who for practical purposes will never run out of people who can beat them easily, it won't matter at all if a computer joins them. For the casual player, it's for the joy of playing or self improvement, not being the best. People who can't lose either get very frustrated or very good. --Confused

Go exposes moral character, so computer Go players will always suck at some wabi/sabi level?

  • Not necessarily. Just like in music, computers can produce pleasing pieces without a trace of soul, which are better than most of the junk produced by humans with a soul - if they haven't sold it already. Only because Go can be used to express one's character doesn't meant that every game has to contains a character expression. --Confused

When a computer becomes champ, will anyone care?

  • All non-luck games will already have been won by computers. Go will inevitably be the last skill game to fall?
    • Wouldn't it's being the LAST game make it more worth caring about for that?
  • Many people don't consider the brute-force problem space search methods to be very interesting from a can-computers-think perspective, because there is no creativity shown by such methods.
    • As Kasparov-Deep Blue proved, Chess was a dead end for Artificial Intelligence research (as have other games). So there is no worry of a computer being champ.--Tim Brent
  • 25-50 million people around the world play Go. They might care :-)


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This is a copy of the living page "Some philosophical questions about computers and Go" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.