[ThomPete]

You are missing the point completely.

Of course there were people who believed that Go would be able to beat humans. Just as today there are people who believe that AI can be a treat.

But it wasn't a majority of people who believed Go would be able just as it isn't a majority who believes AI can be a threat.

I.e. just because the majority believe something doesn't mean it will be so (or vice versa)

[argonaut]

You're going to need citations for your unsubstantiated claims. I've brought forth a highly prominent expert opinion in 2007 that computer Go would be dominant by 2017.

And not media reports from present-day that just repeat this meme that almost everyone believed Go wouldn't happen for decades.

[ThomPete]

Again you are missing the point.

A highly prominent expert opinion but the general consensus was that it would take a long time. Ask anyone who went to AI class back then.

Here is another expert

"In May of 2014, Wired published a feature titled, “The Mystery of Go, the Ancient Game That Computers Still Can’t Win,” where computer scientist Rémi Coulom estimated we were a decade away from having a computer beat a professional Go player. (To his credit, he also said he didn’t like making predictions.)"

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-world-of-computer-go/

You also find highly prominent expert opinions that AI is going to be dangerous and experts who don't believe it. Most people don't believe it, most people believe robots wont take jobs either.

And no I don't need to provide you with anything since you have only problem my point that most people didn't believe it would happen which is why you didn't link to anything saying that most believed it would happen.

[Jach]

The real irony is that Rémi said that in 2014. Sometime around then if not before deep learning was showing it could knock down more and more problems, it was pretty clear to anyone who was keeping up that if someone figured out how to combine deep learning with Rémi's work on monte-carlo tree search they ought to end up with a powerful go bot, perhaps even pro-beating. What took me personally by surprise was that the development (which also required a pretty large army of GPUs, though I wondered if we might see specialized hardware like deep blue) was done mostly out of the public eye, not even tests against humans on go servers, until suddenly it was announced the bot beat a 3p.

I think it may be rare that you see consensus on those sorts of "it's imminent, someone just has to do the work" problems because it requires simultaneous knowledge of multiple developments, and knowledge doesn't always disseminate as fast as it takes one group to just do the work. Now I'm remembering this related maxim: http://lesswrong.com/lw/kj/no_one_knows_what_science_doesnt_...

[deepinthewoods]

Google already use asics http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/5/19/11716818/go...

[reacweb]

I think Rémi's quote shall be take in its positive meaning: given the already impressive rate of progress in computer go before 2014, go programs would succeed to reach professional go player in around 10 years. When suddenly arrives a gorilla like google with its money, resource and expertise in AI, these 10 years have reduced to 2.

[argonaut]

There is irony in trying to refute my single expert opinion with another single expert opinion (via an article).

Reply to below: You're the one asserting that experts thought Go wouldn't be dominated by computers for a long time. The burden of proof lies on you. "Some experts thought it would happen by now, some didn't, there was no consensus" doesn't have quite the ring to it!

[ThomPete]

No the irony is that you dont see I gave you both.

I gave you both an expert and and an article claiming backing my claim up.

Find me on single article claiming that it's common knowledge that Go would beat a human soon back then and you have me.

Until then I am pretty confident the main consensus was as I claimed and which is my main point.

We mostly underestimate how fast this is moving and it's not only laymen who get it wrong, many experts do to.

[ThomPete]

I have never said anything about experts. I have talked about general consensus which includes experts.

You have provided on example, ONE of someone who believed it would happen.

I have provided one expert plus articles saying it wouldn't happen, plus you can google and find plenty of articles that said we wouldn't get it for a long time.

You cannot find a single example of articles which are claiming that it's was a general consensus we would beat Go.

And so you are the one coming up short not me. My claim is not controversial neither have you shown it is.

[2bitencryption]

Point for ThomPete on this one. I can find many more sources citing experts pegging computer go at a decade+ off, compared to those who thought we would have it by now.

However, points to argonaut for doing his best Dijkstra impersonation.

'I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.' - Alan Kay