I'm not trying to troll you here, but have you ever actually played Go?? Go is so complex that the word 'complex' doesn't even begin to cover it. It's a game that requires equal parts creativity and logic. The sheer number of options absolutely dwarf anything else out there.
This achievement will be useful in a myriad of obvious applications. And, it is one of the greatest engineering feats that I have been alive to witness.
Re:What we learned in Seoul with AlphaGo
by colllectorof on Thursday March 17, 2016 @07:32PM
(#11308547)
I have played Go and I understand that it is a complex and nuanced game. However, I also understand that it's a game very heavily based on patterns and pattern-matching.
Have you read the research paper and seen how much of AlphaGo's architecture was designed around the specifics of Go gameplay? (Including a set of handcrafted Go-specific training features.)
Re:What we learned in Seoul with AlphaGo
by abecedarius on Thursday March 17, 2016 @02:23AM
(#11302857)
NxN Go is PSPACE-complete.[1] That's an even bigger deal than NP-complete.
[1] According to some comment in /r/MachineLearning the other day. I haven't looked into it myself.
Re:What we learned in Seoul with AlphaGo
by jeeyoungk on Thursday March 17, 2016 @05:05AM
(#11303278)
That is with some bounds applied to it - if we allow unbounded games (ko, superko, etc) then it is EXPTIME-complete.
Yes. Source here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?ComplexityOfGo
Besides, people who make advances in abstract problems like that do not release PR statements and get 1/1000th of the hype and coverage AlphaGo received recently.