While the mogo game and result is in the newspaper and keeping all of
us talking, there was another piece of progress in computer Go that
took place at the US Go congress that I think says more about the
state of computer go than the 9-stone handicap win.
The day before the mogo match there was a meeting with a number of AGA
officials that Peter Drake and I attended. After much spirited,
passionate, and strongly opinionated discussion, it has been decided
that the AGA will develop a plan to formally rate computer programs.
The AGA feels that it has the "gold standard" in rating systems, and
previous to this point all games against computer programs were
explicitly not rated, and thus programs could not get a rating.
It is clear to me that the AGA is not going to drag its feet on this,
and we will be able to get reliable ratings before a year from now.
Before folks start rants about KGS ratings, lets make clear that while
those are interesting, the ease of making a new user name to either
inflate or deflate one's rating, and the ease of abandonment are very
real issues that lead the AGA to shrug off KGS ratings at this time.
The exact details of the system are not yet specified, but I have been
assured by those with the power to make it happen that one year from
now we will have made the first important step towards the acceptance
that programs can play Go: they will have realistic and confirmed
ratings. This is clearly an important step towards more widespread
acceptance of programs as serious players.
Cheers,
David
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