Saturday, April 2, 2016

GO-ing towards a technological dominated world

Recently, Google Deep Mind has developed Alpha Go which is a program that plays Go. Their goal is to exceed the human limits and to create AI that will basically be able to beat any player. And in the most recent match up between professional Go player Lee Sedol, it won 4 games losing only 1 game. This has exploded in the tech world as a historical feat, as never before has a computer Go program won a game of Go without handicaps. It's ingenuous and points to the endless limitations of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. However, for me, I find this success more daunting than before. 

Call me a conservative or a traditionalist, but I feel that games like Go involve human interaction. You look at your opponent to see if he is sweating or panicking; you notice the speed at which he plays; what moves take longer to occur; where his eyes are darting.  Meanwhile, a computer runs an algorithm that a human can't possibly understand its though process by merely staring at the board. Playing on a computer is basically playing against an object that could calculate your every move and your every possible strategies. We humans do not have nearly that much capacity in our brains to complete such a feat, but machines can because once they get too slow or low on memory, you can just order another processor or TB of memory from Amazon and supplement it. It's more than just vitamins for computers, its a nearly endless supply of brain power and steroids that no pharmaceutical  steroid will ever match for us. And for this, this news of this advanced Go program brings me some fear of the robot apocalypse. 

Yes, maybe its absurd, but think about it... is it really? If a machine has been able to topple a Go professional who has dedicated his entire life to playing Go, a 2-year program, it's possible we can make chess, Mahjong,.... other advanced board game programs that can beat these professionals. Not only will it seem that these professionals have spent their lives grappling in vain, but it seems to me that these programs indicate the possibility that some day in the future machines will be able to overtake us in all our intelligence because of their massive potential to learn from us. Of course, we only need to turn off the power to eliminate, if computers become so incredibly deadly and dangerous . Maybe I should clarify a bit, the robot apocalypse I think of is one where we depend to heavily on robots to the extent we forget how to take care of our machines and ourselves. I'm skeptical that robots will be able to overthrow humanity, but what happens for some reason, we must turn off all power in the world. If that is the case, then how many of us would actually be able to survive without our beloved computers and phones? How many of us would still be able to start a fire and cook food? How many of us will be able to adapt and fully be able to survive the programs that help us schedule our workday, wake us up every morning, and do our math for us? 

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