(L) Hikaru no Go

[Guardian Enzo]

Finished the series - here's my review for anyone interested. Short synopsis - I'm impressed.

[Proto]

Interesting review. I'm glad to see that you enjoyed it. Totally agreed that HnG has probably some of the best cliffhangers ever.

Unfortuantely I think you will soon run out of good classic series you haven't seen.

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by Proto

Interesting review. I'm glad to see that you enjoyed it. Totally agreed that HnG has probably some of the best cliffhangers ever.

Unfortuantely I think you will soon run out of good classic series you haven't seen.

You know, I'm not even close. My bucket list is still as long as my arm.

[Guardian Enzo]

Any Tar Heels out there?

The American Go Association announced on Monday that the Hikaru no Go manga creator Yumi Hotta will attend the 2012 US Go Congress. The go board game tournament event will take place in Black Mountain, North Carolina on August 4-12.

Hotta will sign autographs, meet fans, and answer their questions on Sunday, August 5. She will also judge a Hikaru no Go trivia contest on Monday, August 6. The author learned about the international popularity of her manga when she visited the European Go Congress two years ago.

Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine serialized the original Hikaru no Go manga with Hotta's story and Takeshi Obata's art from December 1998 to July 2003. The series won at the Shogakukan Manga Awards in 2000 and received the Shinsei Prize in the 7th Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize awards in 2003. Viz Media published all 23 compiled book volumes in North America. The television anime adaptation first aired in Japan from 2001 to 2003, and Viz also released the series on DVD in North America.

[larethian]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

Finished the series - here's my review for anyone interested. Short synopsis - I'm impressed.

Just saw this being necro-ed. I think I've rewatched this 4 or 5 times over the last decade. (and I did learn Go because of this )

Not sure whether you know this, but there are a few final chapters adapted in the new year special which takes place after episode 75 (and I like that particular match because it used a rare opening move on the Tengen ). And if my memory serves me right, there's are also a few more final final chapters in the manga not adapted.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

Any Tar Heels out there?

Ah, North Carolina. Just the place I'd want to visit in August!

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by larethian

Just saw this being necro-ed. I think I've rewatched this 4 or 5 times over the last decade. (and I did learn Go because of this )

Not sure whether you know this, but there are a few final chapters adapted in the new year special which takes place after episode 75 (and I like that particular match because it used a rare opening move on the Tengen ). And if my memory serves me right, there's are also a few more final final chapters in the manga not adapted.

Yeah, I've read them thanks. Still not the ending I'd have wanted, but more complete than the anime one.

[ronin myael]

i love this series! it made me want to learn how to play go. it has a great plot, dynamic characters and beautiful art courtesy of obata-sensei.

[larethian]

Wee, watching the HD version from the BD box sets now, or should I say 'rewatching'. Quality looks good,; they kept the 4:3 aspect ratio though, just saying.

[SeijiSensei]

Were you expecting they could magically create a widescreen format when it did not exist before? At best they could do some nonlinear stretching where the degree of stretching increases the further you move left or right away from the center of the image. My Sony TV has that feature. It looks okay when you have all the important content in the center of the screen and just background on the left and right sides, like a TV newscaster sitting at a desk.

I'm much happier when distributors retain the original aspect ratio and let me decide whether to stretch it.

[larethian]

Like i said, i was "just saying". I wasn't expecting anything of that sort. It was just a random comment.


Which reminds me as i watched, while romance is not the focus, i wish Hikaru had hooked up with Akari at some point in the series. It would have made the series slightly more gratifying to me.

[fukarming]

Originally Posted by larethian

Which reminds me as i watched, while romance is not the focus, i wish Hikaru had hooked up with Akari at some point in the series. It would have made the series slightly more gratifying to me.

I think it is the series intention to hint to the viewer that to become the top Go player in the world, you need to sacrifice lots of things, friendship, love...etc. Heck Touya Meijin had a young wife. Meijin is in his 50s-60s while his wife is only 30s-40s. I bet Meijin focus on Go for a long long time, and when he got rich someone introduce him his current wife.

[4Tran]

Hikaru also dropped out of school, which is almost unheard of in anime.

[Guardian Enzo]

And let's be honest, if there was ever a shounen pairing the fujoshi were probably right about...

[TinyRedLeaf]

Google AI computer beats human champion of Go

London (Jan 27, 2016): A Google subsidiary based in Britain, DeepMind, has built a system capable of beating the best human players in the world at the Rast Asian board game Go.

Go, a game that involves placing black or white tiles on a 19x19 board and trying to remove your opponents's, is far more difficult for a computer to master than a game such as chess.

DeepMind's software, AlphaGo, successfully beat the three-time European Go champion Fan Hui 5–0 in a series of games at the company’s headquarters in King’s Cross last October.

Dr Tanguy Chouard, a senior editor at Nature who attended the matches as part of the review process, described the victory as "really chilling to watch".

"It was one of the most exciting moments of my career," he added. "But with the usual mixed feelings... On the quiet room downstairs, one couldn't help but root for the poor human being beaten."

It's the first such victory for a computer program, and it came a decade before anyone expected it.

As recently as 2014, Remi Coulom, developer of the previous leading Go game AI, Crazy Stone, had predicted that it would take 10 more years for a machine to win against a top-rated human player without a handicap.

But AlphaGo beat all expectations by approaching the challenge in a completely different way from previous software.

THE GUARDIAN

[TinyRedLeaf]

EDIT: And the result is out!

Lee Sedol resigns the first game. It's a win for AlphaGo. (3.33pm Singapore time, 7.33am GMT)

Man 0, Machine 1

has science gone too far?



Google artificial intelligence Go battle kicks off in Seoul

Seoul (March 9, Wed): In a landmark battle between man and artificial intelligence (AI), the world champion of the game Go is facing off against a computer.

South Korea's Lee Se-dol is playing Google's AlphaGo programme in the first of a series of five games in Seoul.

In October 2015, AlphaGo beat the European Go champion Fan Hui, an achievement that was not expected for years.

A computer has beaten the world chess champion, but the Chinese game Go is seen as significantly more complex.

The first game between Mr Lee and AlphaGo kicked off at 1pm local time (4am GMT) and is expected to last for several hours.

It is being live broadcast on YouTube.

(Ed's note: Do watch the live stream. The commentary alone is fascinating!)

The two opponents will play a total of five games over the next five days for a prize of about US$1 million.

The five-day battle is being seen as a major test of what scientists and engineers have achieved in the sphere of artificial intelligence.

BBC

Man vs Machine: Who would prevail in the ancient game of Go?

Seoul (March 9, Wed): Who is smarter, man or machine?

The question is being put to the test at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, where Google's AI system is challenging the world champion of the game of Go in a five-match tournament this week, starting today, the 9th of March.

The match began at 1pm local time (4am GMT), and it's being live-streamed on the DeepMind YouTube Channel, with commentary in English.

After each match, Google's blog will be updated with the results.

Thirty-three year world champion, Lee Se-dol, has said that he's nervous about the match, as playing against a machine is very different from facing an actual human opponent.

The Google AI, dubbed AlphaGo, made headlines when it defeated the European champion Fan Hui, 5-0, in October 2015.

It was the first time that an artificial intelligence had defeated a human professional, let alone a player of grandmaster rank.

'A victory for humanity'

Unlike chess, Go is a vastly more complex game, with a far larger set of possible moves in every match.

For example, there are 20 possible opening moves in the a game of chess.

In contrast, the first player in Go has as many as 361 possible moves.

As such, emotions play a large role in the game.

Lee himself said the decisions he makes are dependent on the physical reactions of his opponent.

And with a machine, he won't be able to do that.

So Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt probably struck the right note when he said that any result will be a victory for humanity.

Alphabet is the parent company of Google, which is hoping to apply the artificial intelligence in uses ranging from health care to robotics.

Any win by AlphaGo in this tournament would catapult DeepMind — the Google unit that developed the machine — to the forefront of artificial intelligence research.

But such sentiments aren't likely to take the pressure off Lee, who's effectively playing with his reputation — as well as that of his discipline and his entire species — at stake.


BBC, THE VERGE, TECH REPUBLIC

[TinyRedLeaf]

It's the decisive third game of the five-match tournament between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo. Lee is already two games behind:

AlphaGo beats Lee Se-dol again to go 2-0 up in historic Go series

Seoul (March 10, Thu): Google stunned the world by defeating Go legend Lee Sedol on Wednesday, and it wasn't a fluke.

AlphaGo, the AI program developed by Google's DeepMind unit, has just won the second game of a five-game Go match being held in Seoul, South Korea.

AlphaGo prevailed in a gripping battle that saw Lee resign after hanging on in the final period of byo-yomi ("second-reading" in Japanese) overtime, which gave him fewer than 60 seconds to carry out each move.

"Yesterday I was surprised but today it's more than that — I am speechless," said Lee in the post-game press conference. "I admit that it was a very clear loss on my part. From the very beginning of the game I did not feel like there was a point that I was leading."

DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis was "speechless" too. "I think it's testament to Lee Sedol's incredible skills," he said. "We're very pleased that AlphaGo played some quite surprising and beautiful moves, according to the commentators, which was amazing to see."

THE VERGE

Whatever the outcome of the third game, all five matches of the tournament will be played. But if AlphaGo wins again, it would be a truly historic moment (and $1 million richer).

Is mankind doomed?

YouTube

https://youtu.be/qUAmTYHEyM8

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

[SeijiSensei]

Some insights into the AlphaGo algorithms:

In AlphaGo, learning algorithms, called deep neural nets, were trained using a database of millions of moves made in the past by human players. Then it refined this knowledge by playing one split-second game after another against itself.

Tweak by algorithmic tweak, it became ever more adept at the game. By combining this insensate learning, which amounts to many human lifetimes of experience, with a technique called Monte Carlo tree search, named for the ability to randomly sample a universe of possible moves, AlphaGo prevailed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/sc...elligence.html

[Jaden]

It's a bit disappointing that the computer won, but at the same time I'm glad for the 4-1 result. If it was 3-2, it'd be forever contested who was strongest. Lee Sedol's mistakes are already found by many people reviewing the games.

Aside from his losing moves, he had some weird strategies he thought would be effective because he's playing a computer. Game 1 he played outside of joseki. Game 3 he just tried to brute-force a ko fight because he'd heard that computers can't handle ko. But the ko he finally managed to get was just a picnic for Alpha, and at that point he had already put himself behind.

And at the same time, his time management wasn't great considering his opponent is a computer that gets stronger as the game goes on and the number of valid moves becomes smaller. For example in game 2, he was in byo-yomi from the early mid-game.

An interesting thing shown in the game Lee won was that AlphaGo kinda sucks at playing from behind. In Go you're supposed to give your opponents handicap stones if you are stronger than them, then continue to play patiently in a losing position until the chances for a comeback appear, usually quite far into the game. I have some doubts whether this program could play that kind of game.

[SeijiSensei]

AlphaGo Wins First Game Against Chinese Champion

[T]he victory by software called AlphaGo showed yet another way that computers could be developed to perform better than humans in highly complex tasks, and it offered a glimpse of the promise of new technologies that mimic the way the brain functions. AlphaGo’s success comes at a time when researchers are exploring the potential of artificial intelligence to do everything from drive cars to draft legal documents — a trend that has some serious thinkers pondering what to do when computers routinely replace humans in the workplace.

“Last year, it was still quite humanlike when it played,” Mr. Ke said after the game. “But this year, it became like a god of Go.”

Perhaps just as notably, the victory took place in China, a rising power in the field of artificial intelligence that is increasingly seen as a rival to the United States. Chinese officials perhaps unwittingly demonstrated their conflicted feelings at the victory by software backed by a company from the United States, as they cut off live streams of the contest within the mainland even as the official news media promoted the promise of artificial intelligence.

AlphaGo's ability to identify unorthodox but effective moves has influenced the style of current Go masters. "In the first game, Mr. Ke made several moves that commentators said were reminiscent of AlphaGo’s own style."