Episode 34: Alpha Go and Creativity

When Alpha Go beat Lee Sedol, the world Go champion, it came up with creative new moves never previously seen before and even invented a whole new style of play unknown to humans. IBM's Deep Blue, the champion chess algorithm, failed to do either of these. What was the difference? In this podcast, we review Alpha Go the Movie. Warning: Spoilers abound! Please go watch the movie first! This is an excellent movie.  Bruce (using his admittedly thin knowledge of reinforcement learning) explains how Alpha Go works (using the materials previously discussed in our Reinforcement Learning episode) and how Alpha Go came up with a creative new approach to Go that went beyond the knowledge of the programmers.  While Alpha Go definitely does not have "creativity" in the universal explainer sense of the word (it has no explanatory knowledge nor understanding), it did come up with a creative new playstyle never before seen in the history of the world that changed how humans play Go. Even the programmers were caught off guard by what it came up with. We talk about how Alpha Go challenges the Pseudo-Deutsch Theory of Knowledge but meshes well with Campbell's evolutionary epistemology.