News / Articles

Catching Up: Obama on go, AlphaGo helps predict the future, and more

We've fallen behind again on responding to and publishing go-related finds from our sharp-eyed readers; here's a partial round-up to start catching up.
 President Obama on go: "If you’ve got a computer that can play Go, a pretty complicated game with a lot of variations, then developing an algorithm that lets you maximize profits on the New York Stock Exchange is probably within sight." President Obama, in his August 24 interview with MIT’s Joi Ito and WIRED’s Scott Dadich. Thanks to Felipe M Pait. "MIT researchers are now teaching computers to predict the future" (NBC) "Many experts had thought Go — which has significantly more sequences of valid moves — could be harder for computers to grasp...(but) A network for identifying coral knows nothing about identifying, even, grass from sidewalk. The Go network isn't just going to become a master at checkers on its own." Thanks to Michael Bacon.DeepMind, Master of Go, takes on video game Starcraft (Bloomberg) Google’s DeepMind AI unit, which earlier this year achieved a breakthrough in computer intelligence by creating software that beat the world’s best human player at the strategy game Go, is turning its attention to the sci-fi video game Starcraft II. Thanks to Ted Terpstra and Les Lanphear. photo: Blizzard.com
Get a clue: The clue for 9 down in The New York Times crossword for Friday October 21 was is "Go, for one" and the answer was "game." Thanks to Roy Laird.
LeGuin's "Left Hand": "On Page 240 of my Penguin copy of Ursula LeGuin's 'Left Hand of Darkness' she writes '... Ai (the space traveller) taught me a Terran game played on squares with little stones, called 'go', an excellent difficult game. As he remarked there are plenty of stones here to play 'go' with..'" - None Redmond