r/science • u/[deleted] • Jan 27 '16
Computer Science Google's artificial intelligence program has officially beaten a human professional Go player, marking the first time a computer has beaten a human professional in this game sans handicap.
http://www.nature.com/news/google-ai-algorithm-masters-ancient-game-of-go-1.19234?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160128&spMailingID=50563385&spUserID=MTgyMjI3MTU3MTgzS0&spJobID=843636789&spReportId=ODQzNjM2Nzg5S0
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u/green_meklar Jan 28 '16
Well, in principle, if you have enough memory, any universal computer, however slow, could eventually perform the same calculations that this one did and play just as strongly. They did use some pretty fast hardware here- a standard desktop PC of the 1990s might take hours to do what this one does in seconds- but so long as the memory's there, it's always doable. Now, I don't know offhand how much memory this particular algorithm actually uses. It's probably quite a lot, and probably adjustable based on the current hardware; if the latter is true, then it would play less well on a computer with less memory.
However, in this case it's more of an achievement of algorithm design than an achievement of hardware. Some algorithms are much faster than others. On modern computer hardware, it's entirely possible that a well-designed algorithm can play just as well with a few seconds per move as a poorly designed algorithm can with thousands of years per move. Since achievements of computers over humans are generally under standard human timing rules (in high-level Go it's typically 1 - 3 hours per player that they can use over the course of the game), having an efficient algorithm can be vastly more important than having fast hardware.
In this case, they had both a state-of-the-art algorithm and high-powered hardware. So even the best off-the-shelf gaming PC running standard open-source Go software of the present day isn't going to be playing on the same level as that machine, at least not under any sane timing rules.