week5-AlphaGo

Artificial intelligence: Google's AlphaGo beats Go master Lee Se-dol

12 March 2016

Google's AlphaGo program was playing against Lee Se-dol in Seoul, in South Korea.

Mr Lee had been confident he would win before the competition started.

The Chinese board game is considered to be a much more complex challenge for a computer than chess.

"AlphaGo played consistently from beginning to the end while Lee, as he is only human, showed some mental vulnerability," one of Lee's former coaches, Kwon Kap-Yong, told the AFP news agency. Mr Lee is considered a champion Go player, having won numerous professional tournaments in a long, successful career.

Go is a game of two players who take turns putting black or white stones on a 19-by-19 grid. Players win by taking control of the most territory on the board, which they achieve by surrounding their opponent's pieces with their own.

In the first game of the series, AlphaGo triumphed by a very narrow margin - Mr Lee had led for most of the match, but AlphaGo managed to build up a strong lead in its closing stages.

After losing the second match to Deep Mind, Lee Se-dol said he was "speechless" adding that the AlphaGo machine played a "nearly perfect game". The two experts who provided commentary for the YouTube stream of for the third game said that it had been a complicated match to follow.

They said that Lee Se-dol had brought his "top game" but that AlphaGo had won "in great style". The AlphaGo system was developed by British computer company DeepMind which was bought by Google in 2014. It has built up its expertise by studying older games and teasing out patterns of play. And, according to DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis, it has also spent a lot of time just playing the game.

"It played itself, different versions of itself, millions and millions of times and each time got incrementally slightly better - it learns from its mistakes," he told the BBC before the matches started. This virtuous circle of constant improvement meant the super computer went into the five-match series stronger than when it beat the European champion late last year.

Then the goal posts moved. The critics said chess was beyond competing capability because it needed human intuition and creativity.

Critics claimed a horizon where computers might beat some professionals but certainly not grand masters. Humans have limited memory and need brilliant pattern perception and creative strategies to win.

So the critics turned to Go as the impossible. Even with today's vast computer memories and incredibly fast processors (which have doubled more than eight times since Deep Blue), the ancient game will not yield to brute force. The size of the search required for Go is larger than chess by more than the number of atoms in the universe.

When Facebook announced earlier this year that their program had beaten a strong Go amateur, jaws dropped in the AI community - and fell to the floor that same day when Google's Deep Mind genius team announced their AlphaGo beat the European champion 5-0.

To beat one of the world's top players, Deep Mind used a mixture of clever strategies to make the search much smaller. They trained their machine on 30 million expert moves to start with, and then the learning machine played against itself millions of times. It worked - the holy grail is in the bag and the goal posts can shift no further.

Does this mean AI is now smarter than us and will kill us mere humans? Certainly not. AlphaGo doesn't care if it wins or loses. It doesn't even care if it plays and it certainly couldn't make you a cup of tea after the game. Does it mean that AI will soon take your job? Possibly you should be more worried about that.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35785875

Key words:

1.executive (n.) 主管
2.incrementally (adv.) 增值地
3.intuition (n.) 直覺
4.perception (n.) 觀念，看法，認識
5.amateur (n.) 業餘愛好者

Structure of the Lead：

      WHO- AlphaGo, Lee Se-do

      WHEN- 12 March 2016

      WHAT- The Chinese board game

      WHY- Not mentioned

      WHERE- Seoul, in South Korea

      HOW- AlphaGo beat Lee Se-do 4-1

week4-香港書商失蹤

'Smear campaign' against Chinese president linked to disappearance of Hong Kong booksellers

5 January 2016


The suspected abductions of five Hong Kong booksellers who specialized in salacious books about China’s Communist party elite are an attempt to stamp out a “smear campaign” against Chinese president Xi Jinping, a source has claimed.
Five men linked to the Causeway Bay Books shop in the former British colony have vanished since mid-October, in southern China, Thailand and, last week, Hong Kong. They include publisher Gui Minhai, the bookshop’s 51-year-old owner, and Lee Bo, his 65-year-old business partner.

Lee disappeared in Hong Kong last Wednesday evening, sparking protests from politicians and activists who accuse Chinese security officials of carrying out the illegal snatchings in order to silence the former colony’s lucrative trade in banned political books.

Government critics describe Lee’s suspected abduction to mainland China as the latest sign of Beijing’s erosion of civil rights in what is supposedly a semi-autonomous territory.

“Lee Bo’s case is a game changer. It shows that ‘one country, two systems’ has completely collapsed,” said Bao Pu, a prominent Hong Kong publisher, referring to the political model introduced after handover in 1997 guaranteeing continued freedom to the territory’s residents.

Mystery still surrounds the disappearances of the five booksellers. China has repeatedly denied knowledge of the case, despite growing suspicion that its security forces were responsible for the booksellers’ detentions.

On Monday night it emerged that Lee’s wife had attempted to withdraw a missing person report filed with Hong Kong police after receiving a faxed copy of a letter, supposedly penned by her husband.

The letter’s author, who claimed to be Lee, said he had travelled to mainland China of his own accord to assist with “an investigation which may take a while”.

“I am now very good and everything is normal,” the author wrote, without explaining how he reached mainland China without his travel documents or attracting the attention of immigration officials.

In an interview about three weeks before his own disappearance, Lee told the Guardian he suspected the disappearance of his partner Gui Minhai on 17 October was linked to a mystery book Gui had been preparing to publish.

Lee sought to distance him and the other three booksellers who had already gone missing from the title, claiming to not even know its name. “The content of the book was solely Mr Gui’s business,” he said. “It has got nothing to do with those three guys in Hong Kong. They are just selling books or they were just selling books. They know nothing. They had nothing to do with the content of the book.”

Lee said he suspected his colleagues had been taken in an attempt to prevent the publication of the mystery tome. “I think those people didn’t want the book to come out. They got everybody involved in that book to make sure that the book is not out there,” he told the Guardian.

The Hong Kong-based publishing source, who has direct knowledge of the book’s contents, said the volume was to have been called “Xi and his six women”. Despite its title, the book was mainly focused on just one woman, the source said: a Chinese television presenter whom it claimed Xi had known before he married his current wife, Peng Liyuan, in 1987.

Beijing has long been infuriated by the sensational – and often implausible – political exposés about its leaders’ private lives that are produced in Hong Kong and sell like hotcakes among visitors from the mainland, where such material is banned.

But the source claimed Beijing had viewed a recent flurry of titles about Xi Jinping as “a concerted smear campaign” against the Chinese leader, who took power in November 2012. “They [mainland authorities] might have accepted books critical of other high level cadres, but not of Xi Jinping.”

Gui’s upcoming tome on Xi’s private life was the final straw, the source added. “The mainland authorities decided to shut the whole operation down.”

Despite the growing international outcry surrounding the missing booksellers, China has continued to deny knowledge of the situation.

Police officials in Shenzhen, the city in southern China where Lee is believed to be being held, told the state-run Global Times they had “no knowledge of the case”.

Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK said police in the former colony would continue to investigate Lee’s disappearance.

Speaking before he was taken, Lee said the shadowy nature of Gui’s apparent abduction from his holiday home in Thailand would place whoever had taken him in “quite an awkward position”.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/smear-campaign-chinese-president-linked-disappearance-hong-kong-booksellers

Key words:

1.abduction (n.) 綁架

2.salacious (adj.) 好色的，淫蕩的

3.snatch (v.) 奪取，抓住

4.withdraw (v.) 撤退，取回

5.sensational (adj.) 轟動的，聳人聽聞的

6.outcry (n.) 大聲喊叫，吶喊，拍賣

Structure of the Lead：

      WHO-  5 bookstore publishers

      WHEN- 5 January 2016

      WHAT-  

      WHY- Disappearing in Hong Kong, and suspected by Hong Kong people 

      WHERE-  Hong Kong

      HOW-  Not mentioned

week3-慰安婦

Japan and South Korea agree WW2 'comfort women' deal

28 December 2015

The issue has been the key cause for strained ties. South Korea has demanded stronger apologies and compensation.

Only 46 former "comfort women" are still alive in South Korea. The announcement came after Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida met his counterpart Yun Byung-se in Seoul, following moves to speed up talks.

Later Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe phoned South Korean President Park Geun-hye to repeat an apology already offered by Mr. Kishida.

"Japan and South Korea are now entering a new era," Mr. Abe told reporters afterwards. "We should not drag this problem into the next generation."

Ms Park issued a separate statement, saying a deal had been urgently needed - given the advanced age of most of the victims.

"Nine died this year alone," she said. "I hope the mental pains of the elderly comfort women will be eased."

It is estimated that up to 200,000 women were forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during WW2, many of them Korean. Other women came from China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan.

Japan-South Korea's 'comfort women' deal

l          Japan will give 1bn yen to a fund for the elderly comfort women, which the South Korean government will administer

l          The money also comes with an apology by Japan's prime minister and the acceptance of "deep responsibility" for the issue

l          South Korea says it will consider the matter resolved "finally and irreversibly" if Japan fulfils its promises

l          South Korea will also look into removing a statue symbolizing comfort women, which activists erected outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011

l          Both sides have agreed to refrain from criticizing each other on this issue in the international community

After the meeting in Seoul, Mr. Kishida called the agreement "epoch-making".

"Prime Minister Abe expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women," Mr. Kishida told reporters.

The wording of the deal does not explicitly state that the "comfort women" will receive direct compensation, but states that the fund will provide "support" and bankroll "projects for recovering the honor and dignity and healing the psychological wounds".

Some former "comfort women", such as Lee Yong-soo, have taken issue with this. The 88-year-old told the BBC: "I wonder whether the talks took place with the victims really in mind. We're not after the money. If the Japanese committed their sins, they should offer direct official government compensation."

Another former "comfort woman", 88-year-old Yoo Hee-nam, said: "If I look back, we've lived a life deprived of our basic rights as human beings. So I can't be fully satisfied. But we've been waiting all this time for the South Korean government to resolve the issue legally. As the government worked hard to settle deal before the turn of the year, I'd like to follow the government's lead."

Earlier in the year, the South Korean president called for a resolution to the "comfort women" dispute by the year's end, marking the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations.

However, few believed that a quick breakthrough could be reached on a thorny issue that has strained the region for decades and some critics say the talks have been rushed to preserve the symbolism.

It's unclear if Japan's admission of responsibility was legal or just humanitarian, and Tokyo's offer of 1bn yen has been described as a measure to help the women, not as direct government compensation.

The dozens of surviving women have asked for a formal apology specifically addressed to themselves and direct compensation. They say past expressions of regret have been only halfway and insincere.

Japan has repeatedly apologized or acknowledged its responsibility for wartime sex slaves, most notably in a 1993 statement by the then-chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono.

It had also resisted giving greater compensation, arguing that the dispute was settled in 1965 when diplomatic ties were normalised between the two countries and more than $800m in economic aid and loans was given to South Korea.

A private fund was also set up in 1995 for the victims and lasted for a decade, but money came from donations and not from the Japanese government.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35188135

Key words

1. administer (v.) 管理，執行，操縱

2. irreversibly (adv.) 不可挽回地

3. refrain (v.) 克制，抑制

4. remorse (n.) 悔恨，自責，懊惱

5. immeasurable (adj.) 無限的，不可計量的

6. explicitly (adv.) 明白地

7. bankroll (n.) 資金

8. dignity (n.) 尊嚴

Structure of the Lead：

      WHO- Comfort women

      WHEN- 28 December 2015

      WHAT-  Japan and Korea agree the idea of comfort women

      WHY- No mentioned

      WHERE- Japan

      HOW-  Mr. Abe expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to comfort women 

week2-緬甸礦災

Myanmar elite 'profits from $31bn jade trade'

23 October 2015

Their report claims jade valued at a staggering almost $31bn (£20bn) was extracted from Burmese mines last year. It estimates that the figure for the last decade could be more than $120bn.

Presented with the data by the BBC, the government did not question the quantity or valuation of the jade. But it said most of the gemstones from the last year had been stockpiled, with only a small fraction sold so far.

'A stage of democratic transition'

Hpakant, in Kachin state, is the site of the world's biggest jade mine. We were stopped from travelling there by the chief minister, but footage obtained from the site shows huge articulated vehicles turning mountains into moonscapes.

With an election on the horizon and considerable political uncertainty the companies involved are clearly in a hurry.

To operate a mine in Hpakant you need military connections. The main companies listed in the Global Witness report are either directly owned by the army, or operated by those with close ties.

A few are run by those connected to ethnic armies, in return for them maintaining a ceasefire.

"If a military family does not have a jade company they are something of a black sheep," Mike Davis from Global Witness said. "These families are making extraordinary sums of money, often in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars."

Prominent among those allegedly profiting from the trade are jade companies owned by the family of retired senior general Than Shwe. As the military ruler of Myanmar, also known as Burma, between 1992 and 2011, he presided over a period in which demonstrations were brutally repressed and opponents imprisoned. Despite having retired many still think he's influential behind the scenes.

The Global Witness report - Jade: Myanmar's 'Big State Secret' - claims that companies connected to Than Shwe's family made more than $220m in jade sales in 2013 and 2014.

Several of the other companies are linked to recent ministers but most named were at their most prominent before Thein Sein's quasi-civilian government came to power in 2011. None were immediately available for comment.

More than a year in the making, this report digs deep into previously unseen Burmese government figures.

To reach the headline number of nearly $31bn extracted in 2014 they took the officially recorded figure for jade production (16,684 tonnes) and then estimated, based on previous studies, the proportion that's likely to have been mined of each quality or "grade".

Using the prices for each grade from publically recorded sales they then calculated the likely total value of jade production. That came to a jaw-dropping $30.859bn.

To double-check this number, Global Witness then obtained customs data for jade imports into China. Last year precious and semi-precious stone imports from Myanmar were valued at $12.3bn on a weight of 5,402 tonnes. The researchers' analysis of the data shows that almost all of that was jade.

Using the officially declared production figure for 2014, and keeping all things equal (to the average value of declared imports into China) then the estimated value for the jade mined in 2014 is $37.98bn.

Clearly in both methods estimates are being used, but the ballpark figure remains similar and huge. The real total could even be much higher with many insiders saying that the best quality jade never goes through the books and is smuggled directly to Chinese buyers.

This contents of the report challenges the Burmese army narrative of recent history. The military has long said that it keeps a tight control of Burmese political life to maintain stability and, in the face of numerous ethnic wars, to prevent the country disintegrating.

It was, the people were told, a selfless act to maintain the unity of a troubled country.

This report makes it clearer than ever before that the top brass used their privileged positions to award themselves choice concessions and contracts and become extremely rich.

Ye Htay, a director from the Ministry of Mining, confirmed that the valuation of the jade mined in 2014 at $31bn was plausible, but said that most of it had been stockpiled and not sold.

Sales through the Nay Pyi Taw emporium last year were close to $1bn, he said, with about $90m paid in taxes.

He was much less forthcoming when pressed on how the concessions were awarded and the dominance of military companies.

He said Myanmar was "in a stage of democratic transition" and that such moves "haven't happened during the last five years".

There is an element of truth in that. The most egregious abuses do seem to date back to before 2010, and all agree that there have been moves towards greater transparency.

This report underscores just how difficult it will be to prise the Burmese army away from political power.

It also helps explain why the conflict in Kachin State, where the mines are, has proved so difficult to resolve.

Last week, rebels from the Kachin Independence Army refused to sign anationwide agreement with the government - aimed at ending decades of civil conflict - and clashes with the Burmese army continue.

"Jade is a key source of financing for both sides," Mike Davis told me.

"There is an incentive there for the hardliners on the government side to keep the conflict going until such time as they can be confident that when the dust settles, their assets will still be there."

Most proposals for a lasting federal settlement to Myanmar's long running ethnic conflicts involve greater transparency and the sharing of wealth from natural resources in the states where they are extracted.

It's easy to see why peace and democratic transformation aren't attractive options for those making hundreds of millions from exploiting the jade mines.

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34600551