World #1 Go Player Ke Jie accepts Google Alpha Go Match..

[Laskos]

Ke Jie after match statement at press conference, really interesting, from the strongest human player:

I was unsatisfied with the official interpretation of Ke Jie's comments so I took it upon myself to do a better translation. (any suggestions are welcome!): [Edited]
It’s a great honour to be able to participate in these matches. Many thanks to everyone’s support, Zhejiang Go Association, to such a great opponent Alphago, and thanks to everyone’s hard work for making this event possible.
Actually these matches, for me, are more meaningful than any other competitions I’ve ever been in. In today’s game, I originally thought I could have played a bit better. But unexpectedly, even in the opening I played some unforgivably bad hands, causing the situation to be very difficult from the start. I knew that when playing Alphago, if you start out behind, trying eke out a win is pretty much hopeless. In fact even continuing to fight was very difficult. It is really too perfect. It has no weakness, and no emotional lability. So I’ve been blaming myself for not playing a bit better. (visibly upset) (applause)
I hoped I can play a bit better. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that today. I don’t want to call this is a win-win situation, because it was a competition. So it’s really quite painful. Maybe I feel differently than others, because I really feel my performance was terrible. And I probably won’t have another chance like this again, so I think it’s regrettable. I hope I will continue to discover truths about Go. Through these games, especially the last one, I’ve discovered that I have too many shortcomings, and too many emotional liabilities. There are definitely problems with my understanding of Go. I feel like many other players could have done better than me in this match, so I don’t feel worthy of your praise. I’m very sorry, I’ve lost. I wish I will be better in the future. (applause)
Actually today I was flustered, not my usual self, because it was really too perfect. In the first half of the game, I already knew that I was in a disadvantaged position. First of all, whenever I feared Alphago would play a move I had predicted, it would definitely play it. Sometimes it would play a move I had not considered, and after thinking about it for a while, I’d realize that it had come up with a much better move. I can only predict half of its moves. The other half I cannot even guess. This reflects a huge gap in our abilities. There’s no way around it, I have to admit that. The gap is huge.
I’m very thankful to have an opponent such as Alphago, to allow me to know that I still have so far to go. I really wish I can improve in the future, and continue to work hard, and be able to shrink that gap a bit. But this is just a wish. I believe that the gap will become bigger and bigger in the future. It is already so perfect. Again I feel regretful about my performance today, and I’m happy for the AlphaGo team, that they’ve created such an amazing, frightening, calm, such a perfect go player. It is an incredible accomplishment to create such a perfect player. Thank you.
In response to the first reporter’s question:
I don’t know. I don’t know how I will change in the future. Actually I’ve been trying to change myself continuously. But in contrast to a great company such as DeepMind, I can only make some small transformations, limited to myself, but they will change the whole world. So I will just say that I want to make myself better, I will continue to work hard, play go, and help bring the joy of go to more people. Actually I think that playing go should be a very happy thing, just like my friends who are go players (looking at them). Playing with them is a very fun thing to do, so I guess I’ve failed to show this to the audience today. Sometimes I care about winning too much, and I have a hard time trying to control this desire. The last couple nights I didn’t sleep well, because I knew this was the last game, so I was very nervous. I was thinking about what kind of strategies I should use against AlphaGo. I was just worrying excessively causing more trouble for myself. I really believe playing go should be fun. I will try to reflect the fun nature of go better in the future. But sometimes without the challenge of win or loss, go can be more boring. For me, winning IS fun. I guess this is different from AlphaGo. I can enjoy happy moments playing go more with human players. But playing with AlphaGo, because it is too perfect, playing against me, it has no flaws, so it’s been painful for me. Before the match, I’ve said before that this is probably the last time I will play against AI. The reason should be obvious, because playing against it is really quite painful. I don’t wish to bring such pain to myself, but it is just so cool and detached, it does not give you any hope of winning. It doesn’t give you any hope at all.
Today I thought it would play me until the end of yose, and win by a little bit as usual, like by 1.5 or 2.5 moku. That would save some face for me. But it ended up taking my stones (laughs), I didn’t think it would be so cruel. Why doesn’t it let me save some face? (laughs)
It has so many qualities that amaze me. I don’t think I could possibly surpass it in my lifetime. But I can improve myself, overcome myself. This I believe I can do. As the reporter mentioned, I hope I will continue to be the Ke Jie that is flamboyant and self-confident. I hope I can also let more people know that Go is not so such an esoteric, mysterious, and unapproachable. I think it is actually a very grounded, approachable, and easy game. Thank you.

I felt that beyond this facade of politeness and humbleness of DeepMind team and Hassabis, a rude attitude emerged as a cultural misunderstanding. What they basically said is that once Go was conquered, they will move to harder and more important things like Starcraft. This is ridiculous even to me. The level of Mastery of top Pro level player in Go is probably above even that level in Chess. Go is a game of 400 years of competitive history, with literature, tutoring, learning effort higher than Chess. Let's call it 3000 ELO level Chess mastery. To become a top expert in Starcraft an imbecile needs 2 weeks of hard play and learning, if tutored. Let's call this 1600 level of Chess. The DeepMind team is sufficiently rude to dismiss the human skill level, and the simple fact that Starcraft uses similar techniques and is even harder for AI would legitimize dismissal of an entire culture.

So much for fake politeness, to which I pointed earlier.

I do not know how you compare Chess and go to say that the level of top players in go is higher than the level of top players in chess but based on the age of Ke Jie I think that it is the opposite.

No chess player became number 1 in chess in an official list or world champion before age 18.

If some thinking sport is really harder than chess then I expect the number 1 in the world to be at least 30 years old because at age 20 you have not enough time to learn to become number 1.

I am pretty sure that the skill level of top Go players is higher than that of top Chess players. You have to know a bit of Go culture. It might be even significantly superior. I am not pretending to know much about Go. Hints are abundant. No European Go player is even an average Go Pro, many Chinese Chess players are even top Pros in Chess. Plethora of hints.

[Uri Blass]

Ke Jie after match statement at press conference, really interesting, from the strongest human player:

I was unsatisfied with the official interpretation of Ke Jie's comments so I took it upon myself to do a better translation. (any suggestions are welcome!): [Edited]
It’s a great honour to be able to participate in these matches. Many thanks to everyone’s support, Zhejiang Go Association, to such a great opponent Alphago, and thanks to everyone’s hard work for making this event possible.
Actually these matches, for me, are more meaningful than any other competitions I’ve ever been in. In today’s game, I originally thought I could have played a bit better. But unexpectedly, even in the opening I played some unforgivably bad hands, causing the situation to be very difficult from the start. I knew that when playing Alphago, if you start out behind, trying eke out a win is pretty much hopeless. In fact even continuing to fight was very difficult. It is really too perfect. It has no weakness, and no emotional lability. So I’ve been blaming myself for not playing a bit better. (visibly upset) (applause)
I hoped I can play a bit better. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that today. I don’t want to call this is a win-win situation, because it was a competition. So it’s really quite painful. Maybe I feel differently than others, because I really feel my performance was terrible. And I probably won’t have another chance like this again, so I think it’s regrettable. I hope I will continue to discover truths about Go. Through these games, especially the last one, I’ve discovered that I have too many shortcomings, and too many emotional liabilities. There are definitely problems with my understanding of Go. I feel like many other players could have done better than me in this match, so I don’t feel worthy of your praise. I’m very sorry, I’ve lost. I wish I will be better in the future. (applause)
Actually today I was flustered, not my usual self, because it was really too perfect. In the first half of the game, I already knew that I was in a disadvantaged position. First of all, whenever I feared Alphago would play a move I had predicted, it would definitely play it. Sometimes it would play a move I had not considered, and after thinking about it for a while, I’d realize that it had come up with a much better move. I can only predict half of its moves. The other half I cannot even guess. This reflects a huge gap in our abilities. There’s no way around it, I have to admit that. The gap is huge.
I’m very thankful to have an opponent such as Alphago, to allow me to know that I still have so far to go. I really wish I can improve in the future, and continue to work hard, and be able to shrink that gap a bit. But this is just a wish. I believe that the gap will become bigger and bigger in the future. It is already so perfect. Again I feel regretful about my performance today, and I’m happy for the AlphaGo team, that they’ve created such an amazing, frightening, calm, such a perfect go player. It is an incredible accomplishment to create such a perfect player. Thank you.
In response to the first reporter’s question:
I don’t know. I don’t know how I will change in the future. Actually I’ve been trying to change myself continuously. But in contrast to a great company such as DeepMind, I can only make some small transformations, limited to myself, but they will change the whole world. So I will just say that I want to make myself better, I will continue to work hard, play go, and help bring the joy of go to more people. Actually I think that playing go should be a very happy thing, just like my friends who are go players (looking at them). Playing with them is a very fun thing to do, so I guess I’ve failed to show this to the audience today. Sometimes I care about winning too much, and I have a hard time trying to control this desire. The last couple nights I didn’t sleep well, because I knew this was the last game, so I was very nervous. I was thinking about what kind of strategies I should use against AlphaGo. I was just worrying excessively causing more trouble for myself. I really believe playing go should be fun. I will try to reflect the fun nature of go better in the future. But sometimes without the challenge of win or loss, go can be more boring. For me, winning IS fun. I guess this is different from AlphaGo. I can enjoy happy moments playing go more with human players. But playing with AlphaGo, because it is too perfect, playing against me, it has no flaws, so it’s been painful for me. Before the match, I’ve said before that this is probably the last time I will play against AI. The reason should be obvious, because playing against it is really quite painful. I don’t wish to bring such pain to myself, but it is just so cool and detached, it does not give you any hope of winning. It doesn’t give you any hope at all.
Today I thought it would play me until the end of yose, and win by a little bit as usual, like by 1.5 or 2.5 moku. That would save some face for me. But it ended up taking my stones (laughs), I didn’t think it would be so cruel. Why doesn’t it let me save some face? (laughs)
It has so many qualities that amaze me. I don’t think I could possibly surpass it in my lifetime. But I can improve myself, overcome myself. This I believe I can do. As the reporter mentioned, I hope I will continue to be the Ke Jie that is flamboyant and self-confident. I hope I can also let more people know that Go is not so such an esoteric, mysterious, and unapproachable. I think it is actually a very grounded, approachable, and easy game. Thank you.

I felt that beyond this facade of politeness and humbleness of DeepMind team and Hassabis, a rude attitude emerged as a cultural misunderstanding. What they basically said is that once Go was conquered, they will move to harder and more important things like Starcraft. This is ridiculous even to me. The level of Mastery of top Pro level player in Go is probably above even that level in Chess. Go is a game of 400 years of competitive history, with literature, tutoring, learning effort higher than Chess. Let's call it 3000 ELO level Chess mastery. To become a top expert in Starcraft an imbecile needs 2 weeks of hard play and learning, if tutored. Let's call this 1600 level of Chess. The DeepMind team is sufficiently rude to dismiss the human skill level, and the simple fact that Starcraft uses similar techniques and is even harder for AI would legitimize dismissal of an entire culture.

So much for fake politeness, to which I pointed earlier.

I do not know how you compare Chess and go to say that the level of top players in go is higher than the level of top players in chess but based on the age of Ke Jie I think that it is the opposite.

No chess player became number 1 in chess in an official list or world champion before age 18.

If some thinking sport is really harder than chess then I expect the number 1 in the world to be at least 30 years old because at age 20 you have not enough time to learn to become number 1.

I am pretty sure that the skill level of top Go players is higher than that of top Chess players. You have to know a bit of Go culture. It might be even significantly superior. I am not pretending to know much about Go.

I know nothing about go but if you say that Starcraft is easy because you need only 2 weeks to become a top expert player than the logical step is to compare between time that you need to become a strong player in go and time that you need to become a strong player in chess.

No evidence that you need more time in go.

[Laskos]

Ke Jie after match statement at press conference, really interesting, from the strongest human player:

I was unsatisfied with the official interpretation of Ke Jie's comments so I took it upon myself to do a better translation. (any suggestions are welcome!): [Edited]
It’s a great honour to be able to participate in these matches. Many thanks to everyone’s support, Zhejiang Go Association, to such a great opponent Alphago, and thanks to everyone’s hard work for making this event possible.
Actually these matches, for me, are more meaningful than any other competitions I’ve ever been in. In today’s game, I originally thought I could have played a bit better. But unexpectedly, even in the opening I played some unforgivably bad hands, causing the situation to be very difficult from the start. I knew that when playing Alphago, if you start out behind, trying eke out a win is pretty much hopeless. In fact even continuing to fight was very difficult. It is really too perfect. It has no weakness, and no emotional lability. So I’ve been blaming myself for not playing a bit better. (visibly upset) (applause)
I hoped I can play a bit better. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that today. I don’t want to call this is a win-win situation, because it was a competition. So it’s really quite painful. Maybe I feel differently than others, because I really feel my performance was terrible. And I probably won’t have another chance like this again, so I think it’s regrettable. I hope I will continue to discover truths about Go. Through these games, especially the last one, I’ve discovered that I have too many shortcomings, and too many emotional liabilities. There are definitely problems with my understanding of Go. I feel like many other players could have done better than me in this match, so I don’t feel worthy of your praise. I’m very sorry, I’ve lost. I wish I will be better in the future. (applause)
Actually today I was flustered, not my usual self, because it was really too perfect. In the first half of the game, I already knew that I was in a disadvantaged position. First of all, whenever I feared Alphago would play a move I had predicted, it would definitely play it. Sometimes it would play a move I had not considered, and after thinking about it for a while, I’d realize that it had come up with a much better move. I can only predict half of its moves. The other half I cannot even guess. This reflects a huge gap in our abilities. There’s no way around it, I have to admit that. The gap is huge.
I’m very thankful to have an opponent such as Alphago, to allow me to know that I still have so far to go. I really wish I can improve in the future, and continue to work hard, and be able to shrink that gap a bit. But this is just a wish. I believe that the gap will become bigger and bigger in the future. It is already so perfect. Again I feel regretful about my performance today, and I’m happy for the AlphaGo team, that they’ve created such an amazing, frightening, calm, such a perfect go player. It is an incredible accomplishment to create such a perfect player. Thank you.
In response to the first reporter’s question:
I don’t know. I don’t know how I will change in the future. Actually I’ve been trying to change myself continuously. But in contrast to a great company such as DeepMind, I can only make some small transformations, limited to myself, but they will change the whole world. So I will just say that I want to make myself better, I will continue to work hard, play go, and help bring the joy of go to more people. Actually I think that playing go should be a very happy thing, just like my friends who are go players (looking at them). Playing with them is a very fun thing to do, so I guess I’ve failed to show this to the audience today. Sometimes I care about winning too much, and I have a hard time trying to control this desire. The last couple nights I didn’t sleep well, because I knew this was the last game, so I was very nervous. I was thinking about what kind of strategies I should use against AlphaGo. I was just worrying excessively causing more trouble for myself. I really believe playing go should be fun. I will try to reflect the fun nature of go better in the future. But sometimes without the challenge of win or loss, go can be more boring. For me, winning IS fun. I guess this is different from AlphaGo. I can enjoy happy moments playing go more with human players. But playing with AlphaGo, because it is too perfect, playing against me, it has no flaws, so it’s been painful for me. Before the match, I’ve said before that this is probably the last time I will play against AI. The reason should be obvious, because playing against it is really quite painful. I don’t wish to bring such pain to myself, but it is just so cool and detached, it does not give you any hope of winning. It doesn’t give you any hope at all.
Today I thought it would play me until the end of yose, and win by a little bit as usual, like by 1.5 or 2.5 moku. That would save some face for me. But it ended up taking my stones (laughs), I didn’t think it would be so cruel. Why doesn’t it let me save some face? (laughs)
It has so many qualities that amaze me. I don’t think I could possibly surpass it in my lifetime. But I can improve myself, overcome myself. This I believe I can do. As the reporter mentioned, I hope I will continue to be the Ke Jie that is flamboyant and self-confident. I hope I can also let more people know that Go is not so such an esoteric, mysterious, and unapproachable. I think it is actually a very grounded, approachable, and easy game. Thank you.

I felt that beyond this facade of politeness and humbleness of DeepMind team and Hassabis, a rude attitude emerged as a cultural misunderstanding. What they basically said is that once Go was conquered, they will move to harder and more important things like Starcraft. This is ridiculous even to me. The level of Mastery of top Pro level player in Go is probably above even that level in Chess. Go is a game of 400 years of competitive history, with literature, tutoring, learning effort higher than Chess. Let's call it 3000 ELO level Chess mastery. To become a top expert in Starcraft an imbecile needs 2 weeks of hard play and learning, if tutored. Let's call this 1600 level of Chess. The DeepMind team is sufficiently rude to dismiss the human skill level, and the simple fact that Starcraft uses similar techniques and is even harder for AI would legitimize dismissal of an entire culture.

So much for fake politeness, to which I pointed earlier.

I do not know how you compare Chess and go to say that the level of top players in go is higher than the level of top players in chess but based on the age of Ke Jie I think that it is the opposite.

No chess player became number 1 in chess in an official list or world champion before age 18.

If some thinking sport is really harder than chess then I expect the number 1 in the world to be at least 30 years old because at age 20 you have not enough time to learn to become number 1.

I am pretty sure that the skill level of top Go players is higher than that of top Chess players. You have to know a bit of Go culture. It might be even significantly superior. I am not pretending to know much about Go.

I know nothing about go but if you say that Starcraft is easy because you need only 2 weeks to become a top expert player than the logical step is to compare between time that you need to become a strong player in go and time that you need to become a strong player in chess.

No evidence that you need more time in go.

Ok, as usual, Uri's logic in complicated things.

[Uri Blass]

Ke Jie after match statement at press conference, really interesting, from the strongest human player:

I was unsatisfied with the official interpretation of Ke Jie's comments so I took it upon myself to do a better translation. (any suggestions are welcome!): [Edited]
It’s a great honour to be able to participate in these matches. Many thanks to everyone’s support, Zhejiang Go Association, to such a great opponent Alphago, and thanks to everyone’s hard work for making this event possible.
Actually these matches, for me, are more meaningful than any other competitions I’ve ever been in. In today’s game, I originally thought I could have played a bit better. But unexpectedly, even in the opening I played some unforgivably bad hands, causing the situation to be very difficult from the start. I knew that when playing Alphago, if you start out behind, trying eke out a win is pretty much hopeless. In fact even continuing to fight was very difficult. It is really too perfect. It has no weakness, and no emotional lability. So I’ve been blaming myself for not playing a bit better. (visibly upset) (applause)
I hoped I can play a bit better. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that today. I don’t want to call this is a win-win situation, because it was a competition. So it’s really quite painful. Maybe I feel differently than others, because I really feel my performance was terrible. And I probably won’t have another chance like this again, so I think it’s regrettable. I hope I will continue to discover truths about Go. Through these games, especially the last one, I’ve discovered that I have too many shortcomings, and too many emotional liabilities. There are definitely problems with my understanding of Go. I feel like many other players could have done better than me in this match, so I don’t feel worthy of your praise. I’m very sorry, I’ve lost. I wish I will be better in the future. (applause)
Actually today I was flustered, not my usual self, because it was really too perfect. In the first half of the game, I already knew that I was in a disadvantaged position. First of all, whenever I feared Alphago would play a move I had predicted, it would definitely play it. Sometimes it would play a move I had not considered, and after thinking about it for a while, I’d realize that it had come up with a much better move. I can only predict half of its moves. The other half I cannot even guess. This reflects a huge gap in our abilities. There’s no way around it, I have to admit that. The gap is huge.
I’m very thankful to have an opponent such as Alphago, to allow me to know that I still have so far to go. I really wish I can improve in the future, and continue to work hard, and be able to shrink that gap a bit. But this is just a wish. I believe that the gap will become bigger and bigger in the future. It is already so perfect. Again I feel regretful about my performance today, and I’m happy for the AlphaGo team, that they’ve created such an amazing, frightening, calm, such a perfect go player. It is an incredible accomplishment to create such a perfect player. Thank you.
In response to the first reporter’s question:
I don’t know. I don’t know how I will change in the future. Actually I’ve been trying to change myself continuously. But in contrast to a great company such as DeepMind, I can only make some small transformations, limited to myself, but they will change the whole world. So I will just say that I want to make myself better, I will continue to work hard, play go, and help bring the joy of go to more people. Actually I think that playing go should be a very happy thing, just like my friends who are go players (looking at them). Playing with them is a very fun thing to do, so I guess I’ve failed to show this to the audience today. Sometimes I care about winning too much, and I have a hard time trying to control this desire. The last couple nights I didn’t sleep well, because I knew this was the last game, so I was very nervous. I was thinking about what kind of strategies I should use against AlphaGo. I was just worrying excessively causing more trouble for myself. I really believe playing go should be fun. I will try to reflect the fun nature of go better in the future. But sometimes without the challenge of win or loss, go can be more boring. For me, winning IS fun. I guess this is different from AlphaGo. I can enjoy happy moments playing go more with human players. But playing with AlphaGo, because it is too perfect, playing against me, it has no flaws, so it’s been painful for me. Before the match, I’ve said before that this is probably the last time I will play against AI. The reason should be obvious, because playing against it is really quite painful. I don’t wish to bring such pain to myself, but it is just so cool and detached, it does not give you any hope of winning. It doesn’t give you any hope at all.
Today I thought it would play me until the end of yose, and win by a little bit as usual, like by 1.5 or 2.5 moku. That would save some face for me. But it ended up taking my stones (laughs), I didn’t think it would be so cruel. Why doesn’t it let me save some face? (laughs)
It has so many qualities that amaze me. I don’t think I could possibly surpass it in my lifetime. But I can improve myself, overcome myself. This I believe I can do. As the reporter mentioned, I hope I will continue to be the Ke Jie that is flamboyant and self-confident. I hope I can also let more people know that Go is not so such an esoteric, mysterious, and unapproachable. I think it is actually a very grounded, approachable, and easy game. Thank you.

I felt that beyond this facade of politeness and humbleness of DeepMind team and Hassabis, a rude attitude emerged as a cultural misunderstanding. What they basically said is that once Go was conquered, they will move to harder and more important things like Starcraft. This is ridiculous even to me. The level of Mastery of top Pro level player in Go is probably above even that level in Chess. Go is a game of 400 years of competitive history, with literature, tutoring, learning effort higher than Chess. Let's call it 3000 ELO level Chess mastery. To become a top expert in Starcraft an imbecile needs 2 weeks of hard play and learning, if tutored. Let's call this 1600 level of Chess. The DeepMind team is sufficiently rude to dismiss the human skill level, and the simple fact that Starcraft uses similar techniques and is even harder for AI would legitimize dismissal of an entire culture.

So much for fake politeness, to which I pointed earlier.

I do not know how you compare Chess and go to say that the level of top players in go is higher than the level of top players in chess but based on the age of Ke Jie I think that it is the opposite.

No chess player became number 1 in chess in an official list or world champion before age 18.

If some thinking sport is really harder than chess then I expect the number 1 in the world to be at least 30 years old because at age 20 you have not enough time to learn to become number 1.

I am pretty sure that the skill level of top Go players is higher than that of top Chess players. You have to know a bit of Go culture. It might be even significantly superior. I am not pretending to know much about Go.

I know nothing about go but if you say that Starcraft is easy because you need only 2 weeks to become a top expert player than the logical step is to compare between time that you need to become a strong player in go and time that you need to become a strong player in chess.

No evidence that you need more time in go.

Ok, as usual, Uri's logic in complicated things.

I did not see a convincing evidence for go.

Note that I do not deny the fact that rating gap between beginner and best players are bigger in go relative to chess but it is evidence for nothing.

I can define a new game.
Chess*10

To play chess*10 you need to play a match of 10 chess games against another player.
draw is only if the result is 5-5 and if you score at least 5.5 you win.

The rating gap between beginner and world champion in chess*10 is clearly higher than the rating gap between beginner and world champion in chess but the best players in chess*10 are also the best players in chess.

[Laskos]

Ke Jie after match statement at press conference, really interesting, from the strongest human player:

I was unsatisfied with the official interpretation of Ke Jie's comments so I took it upon myself to do a better translation. (any suggestions are welcome!): [Edited]
It’s a great honour to be able to participate in these matches. Many thanks to everyone’s support, Zhejiang Go Association, to such a great opponent Alphago, and thanks to everyone’s hard work for making this event possible.
Actually these matches, for me, are more meaningful than any other competitions I’ve ever been in. In today’s game, I originally thought I could have played a bit better. But unexpectedly, even in the opening I played some unforgivably bad hands, causing the situation to be very difficult from the start. I knew that when playing Alphago, if you start out behind, trying eke out a win is pretty much hopeless. In fact even continuing to fight was very difficult. It is really too perfect. It has no weakness, and no emotional lability. So I’ve been blaming myself for not playing a bit better. (visibly upset) (applause)
I hoped I can play a bit better. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that today. I don’t want to call this is a win-win situation, because it was a competition. So it’s really quite painful. Maybe I feel differently than others, because I really feel my performance was terrible. And I probably won’t have another chance like this again, so I think it’s regrettable. I hope I will continue to discover truths about Go. Through these games, especially the last one, I’ve discovered that I have too many shortcomings, and too many emotional liabilities. There are definitely problems with my understanding of Go. I feel like many other players could have done better than me in this match, so I don’t feel worthy of your praise. I’m very sorry, I’ve lost. I wish I will be better in the future. (applause)
Actually today I was flustered, not my usual self, because it was really too perfect. In the first half of the game, I already knew that I was in a disadvantaged position. First of all, whenever I feared Alphago would play a move I had predicted, it would definitely play it. Sometimes it would play a move I had not considered, and after thinking about it for a while, I’d realize that it had come up with a much better move. I can only predict half of its moves. The other half I cannot even guess. This reflects a huge gap in our abilities. There’s no way around it, I have to admit that. The gap is huge.
I’m very thankful to have an opponent such as Alphago, to allow me to know that I still have so far to go. I really wish I can improve in the future, and continue to work hard, and be able to shrink that gap a bit. But this is just a wish. I believe that the gap will become bigger and bigger in the future. It is already so perfect. Again I feel regretful about my performance today, and I’m happy for the AlphaGo team, that they’ve created such an amazing, frightening, calm, such a perfect go player. It is an incredible accomplishment to create such a perfect player. Thank you.
In response to the first reporter’s question:
I don’t know. I don’t know how I will change in the future. Actually I’ve been trying to change myself continuously. But in contrast to a great company such as DeepMind, I can only make some small transformations, limited to myself, but they will change the whole world. So I will just say that I want to make myself better, I will continue to work hard, play go, and help bring the joy of go to more people. Actually I think that playing go should be a very happy thing, just like my friends who are go players (looking at them). Playing with them is a very fun thing to do, so I guess I’ve failed to show this to the audience today. Sometimes I care about winning too much, and I have a hard time trying to control this desire. The last couple nights I didn’t sleep well, because I knew this was the last game, so I was very nervous. I was thinking about what kind of strategies I should use against AlphaGo. I was just worrying excessively causing more trouble for myself. I really believe playing go should be fun. I will try to reflect the fun nature of go better in the future. But sometimes without the challenge of win or loss, go can be more boring. For me, winning IS fun. I guess this is different from AlphaGo. I can enjoy happy moments playing go more with human players. But playing with AlphaGo, because it is too perfect, playing against me, it has no flaws, so it’s been painful for me. Before the match, I’ve said before that this is probably the last time I will play against AI. The reason should be obvious, because playing against it is really quite painful. I don’t wish to bring such pain to myself, but it is just so cool and detached, it does not give you any hope of winning. It doesn’t give you any hope at all.
Today I thought it would play me until the end of yose, and win by a little bit as usual, like by 1.5 or 2.5 moku. That would save some face for me. But it ended up taking my stones (laughs), I didn’t think it would be so cruel. Why doesn’t it let me save some face? (laughs)
It has so many qualities that amaze me. I don’t think I could possibly surpass it in my lifetime. But I can improve myself, overcome myself. This I believe I can do. As the reporter mentioned, I hope I will continue to be the Ke Jie that is flamboyant and self-confident. I hope I can also let more people know that Go is not so such an esoteric, mysterious, and unapproachable. I think it is actually a very grounded, approachable, and easy game. Thank you.

I felt that beyond this facade of politeness and humbleness of DeepMind team and Hassabis, a rude attitude emerged as a cultural misunderstanding. What they basically said is that once Go was conquered, they will move to harder and more important things like Starcraft. This is ridiculous even to me. The level of Mastery of top Pro level player in Go is probably above even that level in Chess. Go is a game of 400 years of competitive history, with literature, tutoring, learning effort higher than Chess. Let's call it 3000 ELO level Chess mastery. To become a top expert in Starcraft an imbecile needs 2 weeks of hard play and learning, if tutored. Let's call this 1600 level of Chess. The DeepMind team is sufficiently rude to dismiss the human skill level, and the simple fact that Starcraft uses similar techniques and is even harder for AI would legitimize dismissal of an entire culture.

So much for fake politeness, to which I pointed earlier.

I do not know how you compare Chess and go to say that the level of top players in go is higher than the level of top players in chess but based on the age of Ke Jie I think that it is the opposite.

No chess player became number 1 in chess in an official list or world champion before age 18.

If some thinking sport is really harder than chess then I expect the number 1 in the world to be at least 30 years old because at age 20 you have not enough time to learn to become number 1.

I am pretty sure that the skill level of top Go players is higher than that of top Chess players. You have to know a bit of Go culture. It might be even significantly superior. I am not pretending to know much about Go.

I know nothing about go but if you say that Starcraft is easy because you need only 2 weeks to become a top expert player than the logical step is to compare between time that you need to become a strong player in go and time that you need to become a strong player in chess.

No evidence that you need more time in go.

Ok, as usual, Uri's logic in complicated things.

I did not see a convincing evidence for go.

Note that I do not deny the fact that rating gap between beginner and best players are bigger in go relative to chess but it is evidence for nothing.

I can define a new game.
Chess*10

To play chess*10 you need to play a match of 10 chess games against another player.
draw is only if the result is 5-5 and if you score at least 5.5 you win.

The rating gap between beginner and world champion in chess*10 is clearly higher than the rating gap between beginner and world champion in chess but the best players in chess*10 are also the best players in chess.

This has nothing to do wit the skill. To take the age as single parameter is wrong, as say in Mathematics the most productive age is 30, in some Humanities 50, and arguably the skill level in Math is probably higher. AFAIK, the amount of grass root sheer talent in Go is higher than in Chess, the amount of learning and _high_ level tutoring is higher from earlier age, the amount of high level literature is higher. And many other things more knowledgeable than me person in Go would exemplify.

[syzygy]

I am pretty sure that the skill level of top Go players is higher than that of top Chess players. You have to know a bit of Go culture. It might be even significantly superior. I am not pretending to know much about Go. Hints are abundant. No European Go player is even an average Go Pro, many Chinese Chess players are even top Pros in Chess. Plethora of hints.

That there are no good European players proves only that Go is not particularly popular in Europe.

Starcraft is (thought to be) harder than Go for a computer for the same reason why Go is harder than chess. Less reliance on what computers have always been good at (like calculation), more reliance on what the human brain is good at (like fuzzy pattern recognition and long-term planning).

[Uri Blass]

I believe that top player train a lot from early age both in chess and in go.

Many chess players train a lot because they like chess without being able to get close to the first place.

I simply see no basis to compare between chess and go to say that the level of go is higher.

People wrote many chess books and I see no basis to the claim that there is more information in go relative to chess if this is what you say.

I know nothing about the 400 years of competitive history with literature
in go but even if you are correct I cannot see how to compare 400 years of competitive history with literature with the history in chess.

More years is not always more information and it is possible that every year in chess has information of 4 years in go.

Many chess books are written every year and it is clear that no human really can read all of them.

I have no idea if there is more information about go relative to chess but even if there is more information then bigger quantity does not always mean bigger quality.

Go seem to be restricted to smaller part of the world relative to chess and when every big country play chess including china I do not know about many countries who really play go so it is a reason to believe that the same number of years in go worth less than chess.

When I read that only china korea and Japan and Taiwan had professional players at least until recently then my feeling is that go is clearly less popular relative to chess and it seems that all the 400 years of publications missed big part of the world because english is the main language of the world(the language that most people understand even if it is not their first language and I guess that most of the publication certainly 50 or 100 years ago were not in english otherwise go could be more popular in USA and other countries)

I think that we simply have no way to compare between chess and go to say that one has more knowledge than the other.


For humanities when the best age is 50 I do not see a clear interesting competition that many participate like chess and I compare
thinking sports so I think that they are not relevant.

[Laskos]

I am pretty sure that the skill level of top Go players is higher than that of top Chess players. You have to know a bit of Go culture. It might be even significantly superior. I am not pretending to know much about Go. Hints are abundant. No European Go player is even an average Go Pro, many Chinese Chess players are even top Pros in Chess. Plethora of hints.

That there are no good European players proves only that Go is not particularly popular in Europe.

Starcraft is (thought to be) harder than Go for a computer for the same reason why Go is harder than chess. Less reliance on what computers have always been good at (like calculation), more reliance on what the human brain is good at (like fuzzy pattern recognition and long-term planning).

Yes, and human skill I am describing is unrelated to computer skill. Even harder problem for AI than Go and Starcraft would be to post some meaningful messages of some content, indistinguishable from human messages, on this board. This is maybe 20 year horizon. A thing even I do without any special effort.

My claim, simplified to barebones, is that if human effort is quantifiable as energy, then human brain effort to be in top 100 in Go is higher than human brain effort to be in the top 100 in Chess. The intensity of learning in Watts times time of learning in seconds will give Joules of energy. Probably 2-4 times higher in Go than in Chess, and probably 1000 times higher in Chess than in Starcraft, and 1 million times higher than me posting here. DeepMind AI team finds my effort harder to cope with in its AI, but this give them no right to dismiss an entire human culture (at least they should avoided dismissing it in loco) for the sake of their specific problems dealing with human tasks. That was rude.

[Michel]

I can define a new game.
Chess*10

To play chess*10 you need to play a match of 10 chess games against another player.
draw is only if the result is 5-5 and if you score at least 5.5 you win.

The rating gap between beginner and world champion in chess*10 is clearly higher than the rating gap between beginner and world champion in chess but the best players in chess*10 are also the best players in chess.

Clever!

[syzygy]

DeepMind AI team finds my effort harder to cope with in its AI, but this give them no right to dismiss an entire human culture (at least they should avoided dismissing it in loco) for the sake of their specific problems dealing with human tasks. That was rude.

What were their words?

You wrote this:

I felt that beyond this facade of politeness and humbleness of DeepMind team and Hassabis, a rude attitude emerged as a cultural misunderstanding. What they basically said is that once Go was conquered, they will move to harder and more important things like Starcraft.

"I felt", "what they basically said". Most likely they simply said and meant to say that they now want to tackle a harder AI task (such as starcraft), which may get them closer to tackling real-world problems.

My claim, simplified to barebones, is that if human effort is quantifiable as energy, then human brain effort to be in top 100 in Go is higher than human brain effort to be in the top 100 in Chess. The intensity of learning in Watts times time of learning in seconds will give Joules of energy. Probably 2-4 times higher in Go than in Chess, and probably 1000 times higher in Chess than in Starcraft, and 1 million times higher than me posting here.

"Probably". But I see nothing to back up that claim. 400 years or whatever of Go history has nothing to do with it. Availability of high-level literature has nothing to do with it. Or do you mean "collective human brain effort"?? In that case, let's also count the contribution of computers, which have had vastly more impact on chess than on Go.

Your measure of human brain effort is not well defined. Ke Jie obviously needed to put in a lot less brain effort to get good than an average human.

A better measure might be the probability of a random individual reaching the top 100 when being trained for that purpose from birth. That is an experiment we cannot perform (Polgar experiment has too small sample size and suffers from selection bias).

As an alternative, we might look at the number of competitive players.