Winning ways

　　Ever since the stunning victory of Deep Blue, a program running on an IBM supercomputer, over Gary Kasparov, then world chess champion, in 1997, it has been clear that computers would dominate that particular game. Today, though, they are pressing the attack on every front. They are the undisputed champions in draughts and Othello. They are generally stronger in backgammon. They are steadily gaining ground in Scrabble, poker and bridge. And they are even doing pretty well at crossword puzzles. There is one game, however, where humans still reign supreme: Go. Yet here too their grip is beginning to loosen.

　　Go is a strategic contest. Each player tries to stake out territory and surround his opponent. The rules are simple but the play is extraordinarily complex. During a game, some stones will “die”, and some will appear to be dead but spring back to life at an inopportune moment. It is often difficult to say who is winning right until the end.

　　Deep Blue and its successors beat Mr Kasparov using the “brute force” technique.

　　Unfortunately, brute force will not work in Go. First, the game has many more possible positions than chess does. Second, the number of possible moves from a typical position in Go is about 200, compared with about a dozen in chess. Finally, evaluating a Go position is fiendishly difficult. The fastest programs can assess just 50 positions a second, compared with 500,000 in chess. Clearly, some sort of finesse is required.

　　In the past two decades researchers have explored several alternative strategies. Now, however, programmers are making impressive gains with a technique known as the Monte Carlo method. Given a position, a program using a Monte Carlo algorithm contemplates every move and plays a large number of random games to see what happens. If it wins in 80% of those games, the move is probably good. Otherwise, it keeps looking.

　　This may sound like a lot of effort but generating random games is the sort of thing computers excel at. In fact, Monte Carlo techniques are much faster than brute force. Moreover, two Hungarian computer scientists have recently added an elegant twist that allows the algorithm to focus on the most promising moves without sacrificing speed.

　　The result is a new generation of fast programs that play particularly well on small versions of the Go board. In the past few months Monte Carlo-based programs have dominated computer tournaments on nine��-and 13�瞝ine grids. MoGo, a program developed by researchers from the University of Paris, has even beaten a couple of strong human players on the smaller of these boards—unthinkable a year ago. It is ranked 2,323rd in the world and in Europe’s top 300. Although MoGo is still some way from competing on the full�瞫ize Go grid, humanity may ultimately have to accept defeat on yet another front.

　　考研詞匯：

　　stun[stʌn]

　　vt.使暈倒，使驚嚇，打暈;n.暈眩，打昏，驚倒

　　dominate[ˈdɔmineit]

　　v.①支配，統(tǒng)治，控制;②占優(yōu)勢(shì)

　　[真題例句]The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male�瞕ominated (①) job market have limited the opportunities of teenagers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing Japan�餾 rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs.[2000年閱讀4]

　　[例句精譯] 戰(zhàn)后嬰兒出生高峰期的到來及婦女進(jìn)入男性為主的就業(yè)市場(chǎng)，限制了青少年的發(fā)展機(jī)遇，這些青少年已經(jīng)開始質(zhì)疑在進(jìn)好學(xué)校、找好工作、攀登日本等級(jí)森嚴(yán)的社會(huì)階梯的過程中所做出的巨大的個(gè)人犧牲是否值得。

　　reign[rein]

　　v.①(over)統(tǒng)治，支配;②盛行，占優(yōu)勢(shì);n.①統(tǒng)治，統(tǒng)治時(shí)期，支配;②朝代

　　[真題例句](72) The existence of the giant clouds was virtually required for the Big Bang, first put forward in the 1920s, to maintain its reign (n.①) as the dominant explanation of the cosmos.[1998年翻譯]

　　[例句精譯] (72)巨大的宇宙云的存在，實(shí)際上是使20年代首創(chuàng)的大爆炸論得以處于宇宙起源論的主導(dǎo)地位所不可缺少的。

　　supreme[su:ˈpri:m]

　　a.①極度的，比較重要的;②至高的，比較高的

　　[真題例句]The Supreme (②) Court�餾 decisions on physician�瞐ssisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.[2002年閱讀4]

　　[例句精譯] 比較高法庭關(guān)于醫(yī)生協(xié)助病人結(jié)束生命問題的裁決，對(duì)于如何用藥物減輕病危者的痛苦這個(gè)問題來說，具有重要的意義。

　　brute[bru:t]

　　a.殘忍的, 畜生般的 n. 殘忍的人, 畜生

　　sacrifice[ˈsækrifais]

　　n.①犧牲，獻(xiàn)身，犧牲品;②祭品，供物;v.(for，to)犧牲，獻(xiàn)出，獻(xiàn)祭

　　[真題例句]The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male�瞕ominated job market have limited the opportunities of teenagers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices (n.①) involved in climbing Japan�餾 rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs.[2000年閱讀4]

　　[例句精譯] 戰(zhàn)后嬰兒出生高峰期的到來及婦女進(jìn)入男性為主的就業(yè)市場(chǎng)，限制了青少年的發(fā)展機(jī)遇，這些青少年已經(jīng)開始質(zhì)疑在進(jìn)好學(xué)校、找好工作、攀登日本等級(jí)森嚴(yán)的社會(huì)階梯的過程中所做出的巨大的個(gè)人犧牲是否值得。

　　背景常識(shí)介紹：

　　人工智能(Artificial Intelligence，簡(jiǎn)稱AI)是計(jì)算機(jī)學(xué)科的一個(gè)分支，二十世紀(jì)七十年代以來被稱為世界三大尖端技術(shù)之一(空間技術(shù)、能源技術(shù)和人工智能)，也被認(rèn)為是二十一世紀(jì)(基因工程、納米科學(xué)和人工智能)三大尖端技術(shù)之一。這是因?yàn)榻�三十年來它獲得了迅速的發(fā)展，在很多學(xué)科領(lǐng)域都獲得了廣泛應(yīng)用，并取得了豐碩的成果。人工智能已逐步成為一個(gè)獨(dú)立的分支，無論在理論和實(shí)踐上都已自成一個(gè)系統(tǒng)。

　　參考譯文：

　　取勝之路

　　自從1997年深藍(lán)——一個(gè)運(yùn)行于IBM超級(jí)計(jì)算機(jī)上的程序戰(zhàn)勝當(dāng)時(shí)的世界國(guó)際象棋冠軍加里·卡斯帕羅夫起，計(jì)算機(jī)可以統(tǒng)治這一特殊的游戲就變得不言而喻了。計(jì)算機(jī)還對(duì)每個(gè)前沿流域發(fā)起攻擊。它們是國(guó)際跳棋及黑白棋游戲無可爭(zhēng)辯的冠軍。在西洋雙陸棋上它們通常表現(xiàn)得更好。它們正在穩(wěn)步獲得拼字游戲、撲克和橋牌的一席之地，它們?cè)诳v橫字謎游戲中也有著優(yōu)異表現(xiàn)。然而，還有一項(xiàng)游戲人類仍然占據(jù)統(tǒng)治地位：圍棋。即便如此，人類在這一領(lǐng)域的控制力也開始喪失。

　　圍棋是一種戰(zhàn)略競(jìng)爭(zhēng)。每位選手都要設(shè)法奪取領(lǐng)域并圍住其對(duì)手。在一次游戲中，一些棋子將會(huì)“死掉”，而另一些看起來死掉但卻會(huì)在不可思議的時(shí)候重獲生機(jī)。通常不到比較后是很難分出勝負(fù)來的。

　　深藍(lán)及其后繼者打敗卡斯帕羅夫所用的是暴力破解技術(shù)。

　　然而不幸的是，暴力破解在圍棋中將失去作用。首先，這一游戲有著遠(yuǎn)多于象棋的棋位。第二，一個(gè)圍棋中的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)棋位上的走法大約有200種，而在象棋中大約是12個(gè)。比較后，評(píng)估一個(gè)圍棋棋位極度困難。比較快的程序每秒可以估測(cè)出50步棋，而在象棋中，這一數(shù)字是500000。顯然，還需要一些更好的策略。

　　過去的二十年間，研究人員探究了若干種可選性策略。然而現(xiàn)在，程序員利用一項(xiàng)被稱為蒙特卡羅方法的技術(shù)取得了重大進(jìn)展。給定一個(gè)棋位，應(yīng)用蒙特卡羅算法的程序預(yù)測(cè)每一步走法并進(jìn)行大量隨機(jī)走法將會(huì)帶來什么結(jié)果。如果它在那些游戲中獲勝率是80%，那么這一步可能就是好棋。否則，它就會(huì)繼續(xù)尋找。

　　這聽起來需要花費(fèi)大量努力，但是進(jìn)行隨機(jī)游戲正是計(jì)算機(jī)擅長(zhǎng)的地方。事實(shí)上，蒙特卡羅技術(shù)要比暴力破解技術(shù)快得多。此外，兩名匈牙利計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)家比較近又向其中增加了一種一流的手法使得該運(yùn)算法則能夠在不損耗速度的前提下集中關(guān)注比較可能的棋路。這一切的結(jié)果是能夠很好地在小棋盤上進(jìn)行圍棋的新一代快速程序的研發(fā)。

　　在過去幾個(gè)月中基于蒙特卡羅技術(shù)的程序已經(jīng)統(tǒng)治了9格和13格計(jì)算機(jī)圍棋大獎(jiǎng)賽。MoGo，一個(gè)由巴黎大學(xué)研究人員開發(fā)的程序已經(jīng)在過去一年在小棋盤上出乎意外地打敗了諸多人類圍棋高手。該程序目前的世界排名是2323位，而在歐洲則處于前300位。盡管MoGo在完整棋盤上的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)還有一段路要走，但是人類比較終將不得不接受又一個(gè)領(lǐng)域的失敗。