Starting from zero knowledge and without human data, AlphaGo Zero was able to teach itself to play Go and to develop novel strategies that provide new insights into the oldest of games.
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Category: entertainment – Page 86
DeepMind’s Professor David Silver describes AlphaGo Zero, the latest evolution of AlphaGo, the first computer program to defeat a world champion at the ancient Chinese game of Go. Zero is even more powerful and is arguably the strongest Go player in history.
Previous versions of AlphaGo initially trained on thousands of human amateur and professional games to learn how to play Go. AlphaGo Zero skips this step and learns to play simply by playing games against itself, starting from completely random play. In doing so, it quickly surpassed human level of play and defeated the previously published champion-defeating version of AlphaGo by 100 games to 0.
If similar techniques can be applied to other structured problems, such as protein folding, reducing energy consumption or searching for revolutionary new materials, the resulting breakthroughs have the potential to positively impact society.
Find out more here: https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch
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[1612.03801] DeepMind Lab
Posted in entertainment, robotics/AI
Abstract: DeepMind Lab is a first-person 3D game platform designed for research and development of general artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. DeepMind Lab can be used to study how autonomous artificial agents may learn complex tasks in large, partially observed, and visually diverse worlds. DeepMind Lab has a simple and flexible API enabling creative task-designs and novel AI-designs to be explored and quickly iterated upon. It is powered by a fast and widely recognised game engine, and tailored for effective use by the research community.
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Oculus Quest
Posted in entertainment, virtual reality
New Oculus Quest is out. VR without a PC, wireless. I have had the last two iterations of the Oculus Rift, and it is truly incredible.
Oculus Quest is our first all-in-one gaming system for virtual reality. No wires. No PC. Just a headset and controllers that transport you into another world.
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“No matter what side of any issue you may find yourself, there is no denying the power of a popular movie or TV show to ignite an intense debate or even a casual conversation about socially relevant issues,” Dergarabedian said. “And often the best way to do that is within a giant superhero extravaganza.
Monday is Earth Day, and later this week, the premiere of ‘Avengers: Endgame.’ The two are not dissimilar. As superheroes fight genocide-survivor turned villain Thanos, the environmental message is clear: resource scarcity and overpopulation.
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Science-themed board games are an increasingly popular way to learn about everything from atom building to colonising space.