> In my experience from chess, you'd be at a huge disadvantage if you started with this zero-knowledge handicap.
One problem is that we can't play millions of games against ourselves in a few hours. We can play a few games, grow tired, and then need to go do something else. Come back the next day, repeat. It's a very slow process, and we have to worry about other things in life. How much of one's time and focus can be used on learning a game? You could spend 12 hours a day, if you had no other responsibilities, I guess. That might be counter productive, though. We just don't have the same capacity.
If you artificially limited AlphaGo to human capacity, then my money would be on the human being a superior player.
One problem is that we can't play millions of games against ourselves in a few hours. We can play a few games, grow tired, and then need to go do something else. Come back the next day, repeat. It's a very slow process, and we have to worry about other things in life. How much of one's time and focus can be used on learning a game? You could spend 12 hours a day, if you had no other responsibilities, I guess. That might be counter productive, though. We just don't have the same capacity.
If you artificially limited AlphaGo to human capacity, then my money would be on the human being a superior player.