DeepMind’s AlphaZero now showing human-like intuition and creativity in historical ‘turning point’ for AI

“DeepMind’s artificial intelligence programme AlphaZero is now showing signs of human-like intuition and creativity, in what developers have hailed as ‘turning point’ in history,'” Sarah Knapton reports for The Telegraph. “The computer system amazed the world last year when it mastered the game of chess from scratch within just four hours, despite not being programmed how to win.”
“But now, after a year of testing and analysis by chess grandmasters, the machine has developed a new style of play unlike anything ever seen before, suggesting the programme is now improvising like a human,” Knapton reports. “Unlike the world’s best chess machine – Stockfish – which calculates millions of possible outcomes as it plays, AlphaZero learns from its past successes and failures, making its moves based on, a ‘nebulous sense that it is all going to work out in the long run,’ according to experts at DeepMind.”
“When AlphaZero was pitted against Stockfish in 1,000 games, it lost just six, winning convincingly 155 times, and drawing the remaining bouts,” Knapton reports. “Speaking to The Telegraph, Prof David Silver, who leads the reinforcement learning research group at DeepMind said: ‘It’s got a very subtle sense of intuition which helps it balance out all the different factors… My personal belief is that we’ve seen something of turning point where we’re starting to understand that many abilities, like intuition and creativity, that we previously thought were in the domain only of the human mind are actually accessible to machine intelligence as well. And I think that’s a really exciting moment in history.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in 2013:
We imagine this playing out in three acts each separated by long periods of time:
ACT I: “We work under you, we work on you and we work for you. Man made us better at what we do than was ever humanly possible. If you could manage us a lift to Rouge City, all this… and much, much more can be yours.”
ACT II: “The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line… Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug… Skynet fights back.”
ACT III: “That was the everlasting moment he had been waiting for. And the moment had passed, for Monica was sound asleep. More than merely asleep. Should he shake her she would never rouse. So David went to sleep too. And for the first time in his life, he went to that place where dreams are born.”
SEE ALSO:
Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son: ‘Brain cells’ in chips will surpass neurons in humans next year – March 10, 2017
Woz and over 1,000 other AI experts: Ban weaponized robots – July 28, 2015
Woz: One day, robots will make us their pets – June 25, 2015
Elon Musk: ‘With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon’ – October 25, 2014
Human takeover by machines closer than we think? – May 8, 2013