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The AlphaGo Zero Cheat Sheet (high-res link below)

Download the AlphaGo Zero cheat sheet

Recently Google DeepMind announced AlphaGo Zero an extraordinary achievement that has shown how it is possible to train an agent to a superhuman level in the highly complex and challenging domain of Go, tabula rasa that is, from a blank slate, with no human expert play used as training data.

It thrashed the previous reincarnation 1000, using only 4TPUs instead of 48TPUs and a single neural network instead of two.

The paper that the cheat sheet is based on was published in Nature and is available here. I highly recommend you read it, as it explains in detail how deep learning and Monte Carlo Tree Search are combined to produce a powerful reinforcement learning algorithm.

Hopefully you find the AlphaGo Zero cheat sheet useful let me know if you find any typos or have questions about anything in the document.

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AlphaGo Zero Explained In One Diagram | by David Foster - Medium

When the worlds top-rated chess player, Magnus Carlsen, lost in the third round of the Sinquefield Cup earlier this month, it rocked the elite chess world.

The tournament was held in St. Louis, and Carlsen, one of the biggest names in chess since Bobby Fischer, faced 19-year-old Hans Niemann, a confident, shaggy-haired American. Over the course of 57 moves, Niemann whittled his Norwegian opponent down to just his king and a bishop, before the five-time world champion resigned the match.

But what followed was even more shocking: Carlsen quit the whole tournament, then released a statement this week outright accusing Niemann of cheating. I had the impression that he wasnt tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do, he wrote.

Neither Carlsen nor Niemanns critics have brought forth actual evidence of cheating, though Niemann did admit he had cheated at online chess in the past. Tongues started wagging soon after: some chess players and commentators accused Niemann of stealing Carlsens opening moves, of getting outside help.

Others accused him of using a chess engine a computer program built not just to beat humans at chess, but destroy them.

I wouldnt quite say that its like a car driving, you know, compared to a person running, but its not that far off, said former world champion Susan Polgar, about chess engines.

The worlds most famous chess engine is called Stockfish, a free, open-source program that helps train the masses. It analyzes games, then generates the strongest possible moves. And there are dozens of different engines, with all sorts of names: Houdini, Leela Chess Zero, AlphaZero. (Carlsen even has a chess engine, called Sesse, modeled after his own game.)

How a player could use an engine to cheat online is obvious: open the chess match on one tab while plugging your opponents moves into Stockfish on the side.

But Niemann and Carlsen played in-person, sitting across from each other. Is it even possible to cheat that way? On this weeks episode of the Click Here podcast, Polgar explained that its not unprecedented.

It sadly does happen from time to time, Polgar said. And the most famous case was at the Chess Olympiad in 2010, when the French team colluded.

The 2010 Chess Olympiad took place in Russia. Months after the tournament, it came out that three French teammates had devised an elaborate system to cheat at in-person chess. Polgar was there, none the wiser.

It obviously requires multiple people, Polgar said.

The first teammate was remote, watching the tournament live stream and typing each of the opponents moves into a free, open-source chess engine called Firebird. Hed then text the second teammate, who was at the match, with the suggested moves.

The third teammate the actual player watched for his teammates predetermined signals. They worked out a way to communicate not using obvious hand signs or facial cues, but by where in the room the second guy was standing.

Polgar said she was obviously shocked and disappointed when news of the 2010 cheating broke. But this time around, the accusations against Niemann have yet to convince Polgar. She analyzed the Sinquefield Cup match, and based on the technical moves of the game itself, I cannot say, or even suspect, cheating. (After a TSA-style security check in the following match, tournament organizers found no evidence Niemann cheated; he would eventually finish sixth in the tournament.)

The 2010 Olympiad was a three-man operation. But this August, a month before the Sinquefield Cup, a British computer programmer laid out an elaborate scheme to cheat at in-person chess solo.

I definitely wouldnt call myself a good chess player, said James Stanley, who published the guide on his blog, Incoherency.

He started by loading the chess engine Stockfish onto a tiny computer, which he could fit in his pocket.

Connected to the computer are some cables that run down my trouser legs, he told The Record. So theres a hole in the inside of my cargo pocket. The cables run through the hole, down the trouser legs, into these 3D-printed inserts that go in my shoes.

Those inserts have buttons for his toes buttons that allow him to tap the opponents chess moves, morse code-style, and send them to the computer loaded up with Stockfish in his pocket.

Stockfish would work out what response it wants to play, and the computer would then send the vibrations to my feet down the cables, Stanley said.

He interprets the vibrations, plays the suggested move, and then we just repeat every turn.

Stanley, a former cybersecurity professional, calls his invention Sockfish. His friend, whom he played against in a pub, was none the wiser.

I told him I was planning to use the shoes to find a player whos plausibly good enough to win the world championship, have him use the shoes, win the world championship, win the money but as a joke, obviously, Stanley said. So its quite funny to me that theres now a massive controversy at the Sinquefield Cup where someone is accused of having cheated.

That massive controversy has not died down. Carlsen and Niemann played each other again last week, albeit virtually. In the Julius Baer Generation Cup, an online tournament, Carlsen made just one move before shutting off his camera and resigning the match. He ultimately won the tournament.

Unfortunately, at this time I am limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Niemann to speak openly, he wrote in a statement this week. So far I have only been able to speak with my actions, and those actions have stated clearly that I am not willing to play chess with Niemann. I hope that the truth on this matter comes out, whatever it may be.

Listen to this story and others like it on Click Here.

Will Jarvis is a producer for the Click Here podcast. Before joining Click Here and The Record, he produced podcasts and worked on national news magazines at National Public Radio, including Weekend Edition, All Things Considered, The National Conversation and Pop Culture Happy Hour. His work has also been published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Ad Age and ESPN.

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A chess scandal brings fresh attention to computers role in the game - The Record by Recorded Future

Meta is one of the leading companies in AI development globally. However, the company appears to not have confidence in the current AI methods. According toYann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta, there needs to be an improvement for true intelligence. LeCun claims that the most current AI methods will never lead to true intelligence. His research on many of the most successful deep learning fields today method is skeptical.

The Turing Award winner said that the pursuit of his peers is necessary, but not enough.These include research on large language models such as Transformer-based GPT-3.As LeCun describes it, Transformer proponents believe: We tokenize everything and train giant models to make discrete predictions, and thats where AI stands out.

Theyre not wrong. In that sense, this could be an important part of future intelligent systems, but I think its missing the necessary parts, explained LeCun. LeCun perfected the use of convolutional neural networks, which has been incredibly productive in deep learning projects.

LeCun also seesflaws and limitations in many other highly successful areas of the discipline.Reinforcement learning is never enough, he insists.Researchers like DeepMinds David Silver, although they developed the AlphaZero program and mastered chess and Go, focused on very action-oriented programs, while LeCun observed. He claims that most of our learning is not done by taking actual action, but by observation.

LeCun, 62, has a strong sense of urgency to confront the dead ends he believes many may be heading. He will also try to steer his field in the direction he thinks it should be heading. Weve seen a lot of claims about what we should be doing to push AI to human-level intelligence. I think some of those ideas are wrong, LeCun said. Our intelligent machines arent even at the level of cat intelligence. So why do we not start here?

LeCun believes that not only academia but also the AI industry needs profound reflection. Self-driving car groups, such as startups like Wayve, think they can learn just about anything by throwing data at large neural networks,which seems a little too optimistic, he said.

You know, I think its entirely possible for us to have Level 5 autonomous vehicles without common sense, but you have to work on the design, LeCun said. He believes that this over-engineered self-driving technology will like all computer vision programs obsoleted by deep learning, they become fragile. At the end of the day, there will be a more satisfying and possibly better solution that involves systems that better understand how the world works, he said.

LeCun hopes to prompt a rethinking of the fundamental concepts about AI, saying: You have to take a step back and say, Okay, we built the ladder, but we want to go to the moon, and this ladder cant possibly get us there. I would say its like making a rocket, I cant tell you the details of how we make a rocket, but I can give the basics.

According to LeCun, AI systems need to be able to reason, and the process he advocates is to minimize certain underlying variables. This enables the system to plan and reason. Furthermore, LeCun argues that the probabilistic framework should be abandoned. This is because it is difficult to deal with when we want to do things like capture dependencies between high-dimensional continuous variables. LeCun also advocates forgoing generative models. If not, the system will have to devote too many resources to predicting things that are hard to predict. Ultimately, the system will consume too many resources.

In a recent interview with business technology media ZDNet, LeCun reveals some information from a paper which he wrote regarding the exploration of the future of AI. In this paper, LeCun disclosed his research direction for the next ten years.Currently GPT-3, Transformer advocates believe that as long as everything is tokenized and then huge models are trained to make discrete predictions, AI will somehow emerge.But he believes that this is only one of the components of future intelligent systems, but not a key necessary part.

And even reinforcement learning cant solve the above problem, he explained. Although they are good chess players, they are still only programs that focus on actions.LeCun also adds that many people claim to advance AI in some way, but these ideas mislead us. He further believes that the common sense of current intelligent machines is not even as good as that of a cat. This is the origin of the low development of AI he believes. The AI methods have serious flaws.

As a result, LeCun confessed that he had given up the study of using the generative network to predict the next frame of the video from this frame

It was a complete failure, he adds.

LeCun summed up the reasons for the failure, the models based on probability theory that limited him. At the same time, he denounced those who believed that probability theory was superstitious. They believe that probability theory is the only framework for explaining machine learning, but in fact, a world model built with 100% probability is difficult to achieve.At present, he has not been able to solve this underlying problem very well. However, LeCun hopes torethink and draw an analogy.

It is worth mentioning that LeCun talked bluntlyabout his critics in the interview. He specifically took a jab atGary Marcus, a professor at New York University who he claims has never made any contribution to AI.

See the rest here:
Meta AI Boss: current AI methods will never lead to true intelligence - Gizchina.com

Second Amendment scholars and historians have almost completely skipped over a detailed analysis of the debates in the First Congress. What wasnt discussed might be as important as what was.

In his dissenting view in the Second Amendment case Heller v. District of Columbia, Justice John Paul Stevens cited congressional debates surrounding the amendments adoption as proof that it related to the right of militias to keep firearms and did not convey a right to private persons.

In the original draft submitted by James Madison, the Second Amendment included a conscientious objector clause, meaning a person could not be compelled to bear arms or serve in the militia if they had religious or moral objections.

Although in his majority opinion, Justice Scalia argued it is always perilous to derive the meaning of an adopted provision from another provision deleted in the drafting process, the proposed clause offers us a glimpse into the priorities surrounding discussions in 1789.

In his paper Revisiting the Original Congressional Debates About the Second Amendment, research professor Dru Stevenson concludes that the question of individual firearm ownership played virtually no role in the debates. Instead, it focused mostly on whether to include an exemption for conscientious objectors (especially Quakers), and if so, how to phrase it.

Quakers were a religious sect that founded Pennsylvania. It was the only colony where abled-bodied men were not required to join a local militia. Quakers were deeply distrusted by the people of other colonies, especially after refusing to fight in the War of Independence due to their pacifist beliefs. Everybody assumed they would refuse to participate in any future militia called up by the federal government.

While founders like Tench Coxe argued strenuously in favor of an individual right to keep and bear arms, Stevenson writes that during congressional debates prior to adopting the amendment there was zero discussion of an individual right to own or carry weapons for self defense, but inferring a reason for this requires speculation silence could indicate they thought the point was so obvious as to be trivially true, or it could mean that the idea never occurred to them. Either view is an argument from silence.

He writes further:

Looking at those discussions together can help our understanding of what the drafters of the Second Amendment hoped to accomplish and wanted to prevent, as well as how their constituents who would ultimately ratify the Amendment, understood its terms.

However, statements made by several congressmen at the time made it clear the Second Amendment was motivated by fears of a standing army and a strong central government overwhelming the states. The Virginia Ratifying Conventions proposed Second Amendment specifically cites a permanent army as something to prevent.

That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free state. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

Congressmen Eldridge Gerry reiterated this view during the congressional debates about the amendment.

What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins. This was actually done by Great Britain at the commencement of the late revolution. [Emphasis added]

Stevenson writes that the debates reveal that three of the twelve Congressmen to speak during the debates over the Second Amendmentwanted to focus on the dangers of a standing federal army, to which they seemed to think state militias were the antidote.

One of the possibilities for the lack of discussion about individual firearm ownership is that self-governance was far greater at the time than today. There were no law enforcement agencies at the time as we know them in the modern sense. An ordinary man was expected in all but one state to be ready and capable of bearing arms to maintain civil order, whether against Indian attacks, revolts, mobs, or invasion.

Put plainly, an overlapping identity existed between people as civilians and government as a ruling authority that does not exist in modern America. Today, there is an enormous legal separation between a civilian and an armed public agent.

This overlapping identity is reflected in a follow-up draft of the Second Amendment introduced on Aug 17, 1789:

A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms. [Emphasis added]

This is a point that the militia-only crowd continually misses. Their interpretation is based on the attitude that only members of government enforcement agencies have a right to keep and bear arms. In todays world, this constitutes a relatively small group of people with clear legal distinctions and privileges. At the time of the Second Amendments adoption, militia participation among the male population was nearly universal. In fact, in most places it was mandated by law.

In other words, the militia-only people make their case on the unspoken assumption that only a select group of people have a right to access to firearms, and that government should be able to restrict firearms among private citizens. But if they are to be consistent then they would need to reintroduce laws mandating participation in militia and removing privileges such as qualified immunity and sovereign immunity from those entities.

Stevensons research also dispels the erroneous claim that the Second Amendment was enacted to uphold slavery, since in some southern states militias conducted slave patrols. Ardent pro-slavery congressmen such as William Loughton Smith claimed the precise opposite during the 1789 debates. To be fair, Smith feared that allowing any amendments would eventually lead to federal interference with slavery. But this also puts to rest the notion that slavery proponents were pushing for the amendments adoption.

No protection clause for Quakers or other conscientious objectors was included in the final amendment. Stevenson writes that the debates provide strong historical clarification of the perceived need for militias. The debates also reveal the significance, for those in Congress, of the existence of groups that refused to participate in militias, the expediency of reassuring those groups that they would not be subject to conscription, and the problems of funding the militias and sourcing firearms.

Stevenson argues that considering the right to bear arms in isolation from other related issues is problematic if we are to be faithful to the original public meaning of the Amendment and its text. They did not treat an individuals right to keep and bear arms in isolation whatever that right may have entailed but considered it alongside the need to provide legal protection for the unarmed as well. This is a lesson that courts could apply today. [Emphasis added]

While Stevenson argues against reading into the lack of discussion around private ownership, we can turn to others like Coxe who wrote newspaper articles describing the amendment as a way to protect private firearms. He sent copies of the article to James Madison, who despite remaining quiet during the congressional debates about the Second Amendment, complimented Coxe in his description of it and the other amendments under consideration.

Stevensons research demonstrates that the Second Amendment was birthed amid a complex and complicated political environment far removed from the 21st Century, and that only by viewing it within context can we fully appreciate its true meaning, which goes well beyond modern debates about it.

Tags: 2nd-amendment, Congressional Debates, First Congress, James Madison, Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Second Amendment

Visit his personal site at http://www.tjmartinell.com. Join his Facebook page here. Listen to his weekly podcast on Sound Cloud.

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Second Amendment: Revisiting the Original Congressional Debates - Tenth Amendment Center

What to Know Today

Representative Jamie Raskin says the Second Amendment does not protect a right to overthrow the government. In a New York Times op-ed, the January 6 committee member notes that none of the Capitol rioters charged with crimes related to the insurrection have had their cases dismissed on Second Amendment grounds. Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, argues that rhetoric from his Republican colleagues purporting that the Second Amendment gives people the right to armed rebellion courts disaster, and that the amendments reference to a well-regulated militia means well-regulated by the government. Raskin has long been a proponent of stricter gun regulations; as a state senator, he sponsored assault weapons bans for several years, according to WAMU.

Predictable and preventable: Highland Park victims sue Smith & Wesson over marketing practices. The civil suits, filed by families of victims and survivors of the Fourth of July massacre, allege that the gunmaker violated Illinois consumer fraud laws by marketing its assault rifles to young, impulsive men by appealing to their propensity for risk and excitement, The Chicago Sun-Times reports. Families of victims in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting sued Remington Arms on similar grounds, ultimately accepting a $73 million settlement that allowed the gunmaker to avoid releasing documents on its marketing practices beyond the initial trove that was shared in discovery. In the Highland Park case, families and victims are also suing two gun stores, the shooter, and the shooters father.

Shooting at a high school in Oakland, California, injures six. Two adult students and four school workers were shot Wednesday at the King Estate campus on the citys east side, the The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Two were transported to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. Police are searching for two shooters, and the citys police chief told reporters on Thursday that one or both of them had likely used handguns with large-capacity magazines, which are illegal in California. It was the second shooting at an East Oakland school in the past month, the Chronicle reported, amid a wave of violence across the city: Oakland recorded eight homicides last week alone.

A violence prevention program in New York is running low on money and more may not be coming. This summer, the Manhattan District Attorneys Office awarded 10 $20,000 grants to community-based organizations in an effort to curb youth gun violence. The groups are using the money to pay young people to participate in restorative justice programs, tech classes, and healing circles, among others; the grants also fund beautification projects in parts of the city where gun violence is concentrated. But only about 15 percent of the $250 million allotted for the grant program remains, Gothamist reported this week, and the DAs Office hasnt said whether it will allocate more. Uncertainty at a federal level: As The Traces Chip Brownlee reported in August, for smaller organizations, getting access to federal money earmarked by the Biden administration for community violence intervention can be a challenge.

On the campaign trail, Texas lieutenant governor promises to pass 10-year mandatory minimum for anyone convicted of using a gun while committing a crime. Republican Dan Patrick, who as lieutenant governor presides over the state Senate, has not said how legislation would define what constitutes using a gun during a crime or whether possession of a gun would count, The Texas Tribune reports. The two-term incumbent has made curbing violent crime a significant part of his reelection bid, and is leading his Democratic challenger by 7 points, according to the latest poll by the Texas Politics Project.

115 percent the increase in the number of young people killed in gun homicides annually in Virginia since 2012. [VPM News]

Original post:
Second Amendment Doesn't Protect Insurrection, Raskin Writes - The Trace