Breakthrough of Artificial Intelligence
When most people hear the word “Artificial Intelligence”, the first thing they usually think of are robots, androids and even terminators from big-budgeted movies which were usually antagonize and causes desolation to mankind. But as oppose to that thinking, in the real-world of DS and technology, AI refers to be the simulation of human intelligence learned by machines and trained by humans through complex computations.
From our last week’s class, we were asked to watched the documentary AlphaGo . The story revolves around the DeepMind company’s AI development of one of the oldest board game “Go” which originated 3,000 years ago in China. Just a glimpse of the game, 2 players using either black or white stones, take turns placing their stones on the board. The goal of the game is to surround and capture the opponent’s stones or strategically create spaces of territory.
Go’s rule may seem simple but it is profoundly complex and requires strategic thinking. There are 10 to the power of 170 possible configurations — more than the number of atoms in the known universe. (https://deepmind.com/research/case-studies/alphago-the-story-so-far)
After watching the documentary, aside from learning how to play Go, my reaction were actually half-baked. First half, I was amazed how an AI can do such things that almost mimics to that human behavior and intelligence. Perhaps one of the best scene citing this is when the AlphaGo beats the World’s top Go Korean master, Lee Sedol for 3 consecutive rounds. During games, AlphaGo made inventive winning moves including the 37 moves. As quoted by Fan Hui (one of the European’s top Go players also defeated by AlphaGo), “It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move. So beautiful”. Thus, a living-proof that AI made a breakthrough to his capacity.
Contrast to my first half, the other half of my sentiments is that I found it pretty scary. From what Lee Sedol reacted on his defeats, it was filled of disappointments. It was quite bothering to think of that AI could almost transcends the human ability and intelligence. It became a historical moment because the matched was not between Lee Sedol and an opponent from another country anymore, rather a matched between human and an AI machine.
All-in-all, Artificial intelligence had his ups and downs. AI could make a great impact to society as well to the economy in making the daily life much more easier by taking over the mundane and even complex task. As oppose to that, AI could replace humans and too much dependency of humans to machines would likely result to unethical treatments.
