Lee Sedol's Divine Move That Defeated AlphaGo

In the earlier March 10 article, it was said that the optimal solution AlphaGo finds within a local scope may well be wrong from another angle, and because any system is bound to have bugs, if a bizarre move is played, the system itself will be finished.

In the March 13 match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, exactly this phenomenon appeared. Move 78 was called the "divine move," receiving praise from all sides and even being elevated to "entering the annals of history just as much as this human–machine battle," yet according to research by professional masters, this move actually does not hold up.

This is the "bizarre move" spoken of in earlier articles. Some have commented that this move was a "deceptive move"—actually that is not so.

In real matches, humans also blunder, and it is entirely normal for AlphaGo to show such a phenomenon.

The detailed explanation, in fact, was already stated very clearly by this humble writer in the article of the 10th:

"The Go rules and playing methods AlphaGo has extracted so far are still learned from game records, with continuous self-computation. However no matter how it computes, it cannot cover all possibilities; it has only found an optimal solution within a local scope. The solving result of this local scope is very likely wrong from another angle. If there are enough game examples to analyze AlphaGo's playing characteristics, then defeating AlphaGo is not difficult for humans. In some subtle recognitions, artificial intelligence algorithms will have great difficulty."

"Any system is bound to have bugs. I remember playing with intelligent chess-playing systems before: if they played step by step according to convention, the difficulty was quite high; but if you made some obviously unreasonable bizarre moves, often the system itself would be finished—they would also play some inexplicable moves. Systems like AlphaGo necessarily have this kind of problem too; it is just unclear where it manifests."

So some people's claims that Google's AlphaGo deliberately threw the game stem from not understanding its principles.

But what inspiration does this give us?

This world is vast; everyone has their own knowledge structure. Yet because no one can know everything, everyone inevitably has blind spots in knowledge.

For example, Einstein once rejected quantum mechanics. This shows that even the most authoritative or knowledgeable people inevitably experience such phenomena.

Under normal circumstances these blind spots will not bring too great an impact, but under special circumstances they may strangle the birth of a new discipline, or lead to harm to a person's life and property.

That is why traditional culture teaches everyone to be cautious at every moment as if walking on thin ice.

But wouldn't that make one "live too exhaustedly"?

Many people are confused about this. If we consult what Confucius said, the problem is actually simple: "At sixty my ear was attuned; at seventy I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the rules."

And Taoism puts it this way: "Man models himself on Earth; Earth models itself on Heaven; Heaven models itself on the Way; the Way models itself on nature."

Interpenetrating these two, the problem is resolved.