It will be interesting to see how this develops. I actually thought IBM or Google would work on this project, not facebook.

a little discussion on the computer-go mainling list, and their bot doesn't seem very strong yet. Maybe high kyu to low dan level. Mostly marketing hype so far.

I don't know about the marketing argument, I'm not sure developping a go AI would be a cost-effective marketing plan given that media will mostly not care until the AI actually gets close to world champion level - and we have all the reasons to believe this requires an extremely large amount of effort. I would more easily imagine it as a proof-of-concept to develop new AI concepts that would later apply to other domains. Althought I guess the prestige of building "the new Deep Blue" might be a nice side effect.

It's not often you see the game of Go in mainstream media, but I was pleasantly surprised today when I saw a deluge of articles about a new Facebook project.

[Article Link]

It seems there's more to the story than the simple fact that it's Facebook that is developing the AI. They are applying so-called "deep-learning" techniques based on the visual layout of the board. This is probably a lot closer to how the human brain approaches Go.

As you may know, the most successful algorithms in Go are based on the Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). MCTS looks at long sequences of moves and uses probability and heuristics to eliminate certain branches of the "game tree" (a diagram of all possible moves) until it chooses a limited number because it can't possibly evaluate them all. Well, this new AI is using pictures of the board to see what bad and good moves "look like." The pictures of possible moves are input into a "neural network" (a system of computers that emulates the connections in the brain) and it outputs the move that it wants to make. Depending on the success of the result, the algorithm adjusts itself over time.

This is the same technology that is used by computers to determine the content of a picture and also to parse and translate written text among other things. The theory behind this is that experts of Go can evaluate a move on a mostly subconscious level just by looking at it. It probably isn't the first time this type of algorithm has been used, but with Facebook throwing their weight behind it we might see some innovations very quickly!

Sorry if this is kind of hard to understand, but I'm a programmer and excited. I am also not an expert at neural networks, so corrections may be in order (and appreciated!).

How many times do you intend to ask that?

Just for amusement value of answering, here is a place you can start...

https://www.gnu.org/software/gnugo/gnugo_toc.html

Forgive my ignorance, but what is DCNN in this context?

Krama,

tydsh added a stronger DCNN only version, darkfores2. It's currently 3d(!). While not as high as the strongest bots, I'm very impressed that a neural net with no search whatsoever can get rated so high.

It's kind of a digital reincarnation of TMark Hall! As I understand it, darkforest2 has been fed the GoGoD games database, which TMark played through and recorded, and - like him - plays very quickly, based solely on shape. And plays at a similar grade to his long-standing 3 dan.