jakiro
Source: Shihan
Today I want to tell an inspiring story in the field of science, a story that sounds incredible: a young gamer defeated a scientific academician and won the Nobel Prize.
Yes, I have talked about how gaming graphics cards triggered a computing power revolution and incubated the AI industry before, but today’s story is even more incredible and more reversible than that.
There is a young man who has been known as a genius since he was a child and has loved games since he was a child. When he was 4 years old, he showed a strong interest in chess. By the age of 8, he could already win the championship in the official chess event.He used this bonus to buy himself an important gift, a computer~ and soon fell in love with computer games.
Familiar operation, familiar plot ~
At the age of 17, he chose to join a game company and become a game designer.
After all, since you love games so much, why not try to make one by yourself?He entered the famous Bullfrog Company at that time.
A year after joining the company, he led the design of the popular game, which is the famous “Theme Park”.
Simply put, this game in 1994 is the originator of many theme parks and simulation management games today, and I even think the Island Tycoon series should be affected by it.
A few years later, he founded his own game company and successively developed two games, “Republic” and “Evil Genius”, both of which are simulation management games.
Obviously, he really likes to simulate and run this game genre.
文明5，启动！
At this point, this story seems to be similar to the story of chess genius computer prodigy mentioned in the past.
I loved games since I was a child, had the talent for chess and Go, and could learn computers by myself. Finally, I joined a game company and became a super programmer, making a popular product that is well-known in the industry.
But the outrageous thing about this guy has just begun.
After making a popular game, he soon began to think about the role of the computer tool in the game, and he began to try to add AI functions to the game.
Few media mention this, but as a veteran gamer, I think this is likely to be the impact of the previous games.
Because those who often play simulation business can feel that in the later stage of the game, when a large number of NPCs exist, computer computing power will have obvious shortcomings.
In the later stage of Civilization 5, the computer often gets stuck in one round.
The theme park, skyline, island tycoon and other games are not only the screen card, but also the commuting routes of citizens are very unreasonable. Even if you build a bus and a subway for them, or even put a residential area and a work area together, they will be everywhere.Running around blocks the road.
Perhaps it is these phenomena that inspired him to think about AI. Can these gameplay issues be used to optimize games?
In 2010, he founded a new company with the goal of “solving smart problems” and trying to master the game with learning algorithms.
In 2013, they created an algorithm called Deep Q-Network (DQN) that can play computer games at a level beyond humans.
Test results show that DQN became the best player in the game within 30 minutes of getting started with the game Space Invaders.
In 2016, the company released another game AI and defeated the game’s original world champion.
——This time the AI is called AlphaGo.
Yes, strictly speaking, you can understand Go as a game and AlphaGo as a game AI.
But the game Go is quite special because of the nearly infinite calculation variables that were once considered impossible to crack. AlphaGo is also much smarter than those simple computers, crazy computers~
Many people are shocked by the wave of artificial intelligence development in the past two years, and often regard it as a single, sudden thing.
Actually, it is not. The birth of countless electronic games over the years has given rise to a huge demand for game AI. Many players hope to fight smarter AI in the game, or fight side by side with smarter NPCs. These needs force them toProgrammers are constantly strengthening their exploration of AI algorithms.
There has never been a programmer who whimsically said that I would do anything to study a smarter AI, no.
The reality is that if you design a good algorithm, your game will be more fun, make a big profit of 100 million, and its game will be smarter, and it will sell for 200 million.It is a heavy bonus that allows everyone to have endless enthusiasm to invest in AI development.
Gunpowder was not designed from the beginning. No scientist has ever said that I would invent gunpowder today. What does not exist is a group of alchemists who hope to live forever. In order to make the need for immortality, they tinker with alchemy every day. Add a little bit of this today and try tomorrow.I just got one point and finally found that sulfur saltpeter and charcoal would explode.
Levinhoek didn’t expect to discover the microbiology industry at the beginning. He just made lenses and polished the lenses every day. But one day he suddenly found that after polishing the lenses to the extreme, he could see things that were invisible to the naked eye.
The same is true for the protagonist of our story. At first, he wanted to make games, but later he wanted to study smarter games, and finally he developed extremely intelligent game AI.
Then they suddenly began to think about a question,
Since AI has the ability to learn by itself, it can quickly master the rules of Go and electronic games and become a champion player.
So if we understand scientific research in a certain field as a “game”, can AI master it?
In 2017, at the Wuzhen Go Summit, AlphaGo defeated world Go champion Ke Jie cleanly with a score of 3:0.
In 2018, DeepMind tried to develop an AI system that predicts protein structure, AlphaFold.Try to use AI to conduct scientific research.
You must think this is unreliable. It is too fantastic to let an AI originally designed for games study science.
You are not alone in thinking so, but a certain academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also thinks so.
Yes, it’s our old acquaintance, Teacher Yan Ning.
So all encounters in the world are reunions after a long separation. We actually met again after a turn of time.
Over the years, there are three main ways to predict protein structure: one is to use X-ray to illuminate protein crystals, the other is nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and the third is expensive cryo-electron microscopy photography modeling.
Yan Ning’s team is known for its proficient operation of cryo-electron microscopy. Her team can take photos five times when others take photos once, which is much more efficient.
DeepMind’s idea is, can this kind of highly repetitive work be solved by AI?
If we understand the process of cryo-electron microscope photography modeling as a game, can we try to solve it with AI?
“They did not plan to take a movie, but chose AI: Since proteins are composed of amino acids, they just use the known protein structures disclosed everywhere to summarize the distance and link angles of each pair of amino acids in these proteins.Take a picture, and then digest them with neural networks, and AI can make predictions by itself.”
The final result is that AI’s efficiency is far beyond artificial, the general team efficiency is 1, Yan Ning’s team efficiency is 5, and AI is 100,000, and it is still growing rapidly.Because AI does not need rest and will continue to evolve itself.Since their breakthrough, more than 2 million people from 190 countries have used AlphaFold. With their help, scientists have not only gained a deeper understanding of antibiotic resistance, but also designed enzymes that can digest plastics.protein.
You should have guessed such a subversive result in the story that this technology won the Nobel Prize.This young man who loves games and first worked as a game designer is Hassabis, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Facts have proved that the development of the times will be fairly dispelled by everyone. When you are stunned by the development of AI, top scientists may also misunderstand it.
When we discuss AI in 2022, many people have observed the impact of AI on Yan Ning and others. Judging from the comment section, although everyone recognizes the development of AI, most people believe that it may take some time to replace top scientists.(Several friends are very forward-looking and very powerful when speaking)
Yan Ning himself may think so too. In 2022, Yan Ning’s conclusion is that the AI’s prediction level can only reach their 2017 level.
This plot is exactly the same as the Go industry.
When AlphaGo came out, everyone thought it was nothing, and they could only defeat the world champion. Humans worked hard to win back.
But soon everyone found that this view was outrageously wrong, because human learning has teachers and textbooks, and human combat power is actually based on the experience of previous generations, plus the result of years of learning, and AI has been exposed to Go for less than a year~ Getting startedI will give you a go master a hammer in the year, let alone watch it in the future.
In 2022, Yan Ning felt that AI was only at their level five years ago, so it was not worth worrying.
The problem is that AlphaFold was launched in 2018. By 2022, it will only be four years old. A four-year-old child will soon catch up with you, a top human scientist. If you still use common sense to judge the development speed, you will definitely be very wrong.
So what does this story tell us?
Is it the development of science and technology, AI innovation, life experience, or should the transcoders be transferred to the coders?
I think the biggest inspiration is love.
Looking back, in 2007, Yan Ning was already a professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua University, and a well-known academic master.
At this time, Daimis Hassabis was still a game designer. Not to mention an academic master, he could not even be considered a member of the academic community.
At this time, you told him that you would defeat the academician of science in the future and win the Nobel Prize. He would not even imagine it.
An unknown scientific practitioner won the Nobel Prize in a stunning success. Although it was incredible, it made sense at least.
How could I win the Nobel Prize if I am a stinky gamer?诺贝尔也没有游戏奖啊？
This is the wonder of the world.
You don’t really love scientific research, it may be for salary, it may be for stability, it may be for the bright and beautiful lights. You are doing similar work day after day, and you feel that scientific research is difficult.
Although he only made games, he loved games from the bottom of his heart. As a result, he studied to the extreme and pointed out the AI technology tree. When he looked back, he was the key to the new era.
You said he was lucky, but if he didn’t have the ultimate love for the game, if he didn’t think about the game fundamentally, if he just made some skin-changing games to make money, would this story happen?Obviously impossible.
It is the love and study of loving things beyond everything, which helped him explore the fog and find a new world.
Never forget to love what you love.
