AI Leaps + CCP's out-going Central Committee: Financial Times, Oct 19, 2017

choi

(1) 克莱夫•库克森, AlphaGo Zero自学成才，轻易击败上一代AlphaGo. FT中文网, Oct 19, 2017
www.ftchinese.com/story/001074729

, which is translated from

Clive Cookson, Google Computer Teaches Itself to Play Go and Beats World's Best Within Days. (front page)
https://www.ft.com/content/39786fe4-b3e4-11e7-aa26-bb002965bce8
("Deepmind, Google's artificial intelligence subsidiary in London, announced the milestones in AI less than two years after the publicised unveiling of AlphaGo * * * Detailed are published in the scientific journal Nature. * * *  "The new development, called AlphaGo Zero, starts just by knowing the rules and objective of the game")

Note:
(a) The English-language report is locked behind paywall.
(b) Demis Hassabis and David Silver, AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch. Deepmind, Oct 18, 2017
https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/

Quote:

"Previous versions of AlphaGo initially trained on thousands of human amateur and professional games to learn how to play Go. AlphaGo Zero skips this step and learns to play simply by playing games against itself, starting from completely random play. In doing so, it quickly surpassed human level of play and defeated the previously published champion-defeating version of AlphaGo by 100 games to 0.  It is able to do this by using a novel form of reinforcement learning, in which AlphaGo Zero becomes its own teacher.

"This technique is more powerful than previous versions of AlphaGo because it is no longer constrained by the limits of human knowledge. Instead, it is able to learn tabula rasa from the strongest player in the world: AlphaGo itself.

(c) tabula rasa (n; Latin, smoothed or erased tablet): "the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tabula%20rasa
(d) Latin-English dictionary:
* tabula (noun feminine; origin uncertain): "tablet"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tabula
* rāsus (participle masculine; feminine: rasa; etymology: perfect passive participle of verb rādere scrape, shave): "scraped, shaved"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rasus
(e) The paper:
Silver D et al, Mastering the Game of Go Without Human Knowledge. Nature, _: _ (online publication Oct 18, 2017).
https://www.nature.com/nature/jo ... ll/nature24270.html

choi

(2) Tom Mitchell, Anti-Corruption Purge Shakes up Party Elite; Presidential rival among 18 other members of 205-strong Central Committee detained. (under the heading "Power struggles. Heads roll")

The first three paragraphs:

"The Chinese communist party's 18th Central Committee, which formally disbanded on Oct 14, was one of the world's most elite organizations. Its 205 members, appointed five years ago, ruled both 90m party members and the world's most populous country.

"Few of them knew that serving on the Central Committee would prove to be one of the most dangerous jobs in China.

"From December 2012 to October 2017, 19 sitting members -- almost 9 percent of the total -- were detained for alleged corruption. Six have been formally tried, convicted and sentenced to jail terms ranging from 12 years to life.

My comment:
(a) The "presidential rival" alludes to Mr SUN Zhengzai.
(b) strong (adj): "of a specified number  <an army ten thousand strong>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/strong
(c) There is no need to read the rest of the text.