So I'm sure most of you have seen the article(s) on Google and Facebook's new competition to create a pro-level Go AI. But you may not know that Facebook has been testing their program on KGS for a few weeks now. It combines neural nets with Monte Carlo, which has produced some fascinating results. Bur when the article noted that it "felt human" in its moves, I knew I had to test it out (plus to see its strength). As anyone here can attest to, pure Monte Carlo AIs don't play human-like at all. So I just wanted to give my thoughts on it, and conduct a little Go experiment to boot, to anyone who cares. (For reference point, I'm KGS 4/5d myself, and I played it in an even game, random color)
Well, it managed to achieve 3d on KGS pretty quickly, so they seem to be off to a solid start. I have to say that I agree with the article's conclusions on that point entirely - its moves were extremely human, except for some extra-desperate endgame moves that humans would scoff at as insulting. It also doesn't understand the concept of "you can't win two 1 point kos at the end". But its general ko-playing skills are much improved from pure Monte Carlo I think.
As for its playstyle, it was at times conservative I thought. On the local level, it probably played nearly as well as myself. It avoided making as many stupid moves as I did, but it also played too conservatively or didn't take sente when it should have. But in general, it defended where it was supposed to and tried to attack my weak stones. However, globally, as one might expect, it was a bit weaker. I made some (very) foolish moves to be sure, but I won the game.
Finally, the experiment: as a Turing test, I've included the first 150 moves of a game I played against the Facebook AI AND the first 150 moves of a random game I played against a human player.
WHO IS THE AI?
Have fun, Go world!!
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Game 2.sgf [2.81 KiB]
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Game 1.sgf [1.2 KiB]
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is a low dan move, being neither here nor there. 
is placed to reduce whatever Black tries on the top side; if White wants to develop on the top, then the approach to the top right corner is more dynamic. Anyway, 
, 
enclosure, and White has no approach such as the move I suggested as more dynamic.
is at "a". However, in both cases it has the lowest winning percentage of all the choices on the top side, 57% in this case and 50% when 
the winning percentage drops to 50% here and 40% in the other case. The approach at "b" has a winning percentage of 67% here, 75% in the other case. In both cases "c" is the winningest move so far. (FWIW. With so few instances, trying to find the best play is impossible. However, it is interesting that