Computer game may help kids choose healthy food

Worried that your children are addicted to unhealthy foods? Take heart -- a simple brain-training game could help them choose healthy snacks instead of chocolates and sweets, a study has showed.

The game involves reacting to images of healthy food by pressing a button, and doing nothing if unhealthy foods are shown.

The findings showed that children who played the seven-minute game made healthier choices when asked to pick foods afterwards.

"The sight of foods like chocolate can activate reward centres in the brain at the same time as reducing activity in self-control areas," said lead researcher Lucy Porter from the University of Exeter in Britain.

"Our training encourages people to make a new association -- when they see unhealthy food, they stop," Porter added.

For the study, detailed in the journal Appetite, the team conducted two experiments, and in total more than 200 school children aged 4-11 were shown images of healthy and unhealthy foods.

Alongside each image, a cartoon face was displayed -- happy for healthy food, sad for unhealthy food.

Children had to hit the space-bar when they saw a happy face and do nothing if they saw a sad face.

Afterwards, they played a shopping game where they had to choose a limited number of food items in one minute.

Further, age did not affect whether the game worked or not, meaning that children as young as four as well as adults can benefit from playing.

"It's encouraging to see that this simple computer game has the potential to improve food choices in young children as well as in adults," added Natalia Lawrence from the University of Exeter.

Best Selling Computer Game of All Time Teaches…

Economics, Entrepreneurship, and Cooperation?

As part of our homeschooling curriculum, our kids spend an enormous amount of time designing complex circuits and structures using a state-of-the-art computer program. They also spend a lot of time communicating with others and finding online resources that can help them when they need to solve a problem.

Doesn't that sound better than "our kids play Minecraft a lot?"

Minecraft is the best-selling computer game of all time, and since its launch way back in May of 2009, it has been fascinating to see how "Minecraft culture" has evolved. It has unleashed a host of YouTube entrepreneurs who review mods and make tutorial videos explaining their creations. Companies make online courses that teach people how to write Minecraft mods using Java. Minecraft is so open and so easy to customize that it isn't a stretch to say the only limit is the player's imagination. We're still working on building out our kids' channels, Elevator Zombie and Cupcakes and Meat Patties. One of the lessons they're going to learn, I think, is that this is an open market with no barriers to entry and, therefore, not a market in which they will be able to earn economic profits. But we'll get to that hard lesson eventually.

Like all parents we're working to help our kids navigate the online space and avoid getting too attached to gaming at the expense of other things, but it doesn't really bother us that much that they play games like Minecraft and Roblox at every opportunity. It has been fun to watch them develop design and problem-solving skills, but—perhaps surprisingly—it has been an excellent opportunity for them to develop their social skills.

Minecraft servers and Roblox games have different, constantly-evolving norms and a robust marketplace for rules. The kids get to learn how to endure various slights and griefs, to be sure, but they also learn how to cooperate with strangers by playing team games on Minecraft servers or by trying to earn more in-game currency by helping someone harvest wood in Roblox Lumber Tycoon 2.

They also teach great lessons about entrepreneurship. If you don't like a game, you can design your own. If you want to cater to a specific community or subgroup, it's easy. There are, for example, Minecraft servers created specifically for children on the autism spectrum who might want to play the game with others but without running the risk of being raided or killed or otherwise abused.

I've been especially surprised at just how big Minecraft has become online and beyond. One of the best things about Minecraft is that it is practically infinitely customizable, and the internet is filled with mods one can download, install, and enjoy. Once again, norms are evolving to govern the use (and sometimes abuse) of mods and modders, and reputation-based mechanisms help people know which sites they can trust and which sites they can't when it comes to mod downloads.

There are people—DanTDM and Stampy Longnose, for example—who make very comfortable livings running YouTube channels consisting almost solely of videos of them playing Minecraft, Roblox, or some other game. They are legitimate celebrities. A year or so ago, a company started making a line of "Tube Heroes" toys based on famous YouTube Minecraft players, and you can see videos of Minecraft and other gaming conventions at which thousands of people are there to see DanTDM play and at which people line up for his autograph. There are also people who earn their living making games and items for Roblox, which has an in-game currency called "Robux" that can be purchased with real dollars and then spent on game passes, special items and upgrades, and so on.

Games like Minecraft and Roblox give virtually unlimited play to the imagination, and they provide decentralized platforms on which people can build, divide, or conquer—or simply find a community of gamers with similar interests. The internet brings out the worst in us, but games like Minecraft and Roblox show how it can also bring out our best.

With the Spring semester over and the summer finally upon us, I'll be looking forward to checking out "Liberty Minecraft," a new project created and maintained by a Learn Liberty viewer named Nathan, which uses a highly customized Minecraft server that reshapes the game's interactive multiplayer world into an immersive tool for teaching players about private property and free enterprise.

Computer wins 2nd game against Chinese go champion

WUZHEN, China (AP) — A computer beat China's top player of go, one of the last games machines have yet to master, for a second time Thursday in a competition authorities limited the Chinese public's ability to see.

Ke Jie lost despite playing what Google's AlphaGo indicated was the best game any opponent has played against it, said Demis Hassabis, founder of the company that developed the program.

AlphaGo defeated Ke, a 19-year-old prodigy, in their first game Tuesday during a forum organized by Google on artificial intelligence in Wuzhen, a town west of Shanghai. They play a final game Saturday.

AlphaGo previously defeated European and South Korean champions, surprising players who had expected it to be at least a decade before computers could master the game.

Internet users outside China could watch this week's games live but Chinese censors blocked most mainland web users from seeing the Google site carrying the feed. None of China's dozens of video sites carried the live broadcasts but a recording of Tuesday's game was available the following night on one popular site, Youku.com.

State media reports on the games have been brief, possibly reflecting Beijing's antipathy toward Google, which closed its China-based search engine in 2010 following a dispute over censorship and computer hacking. Google says 60 million people in China watched online when AlphaGo played South Korea's go champion in March 2016.

The official response to the match, a major event for the worlds of go and artificial intelligence, reflects the conflict between the ruling Communist Party's technology ambitions and its insistence on controlling what its public can see, hear and read.

The government encourages internet use for business and education but tries to block access to material considered subversive.

The possible reason for suppressing coverage while allowing Google to organize the event was unclear. Censorship orders to Chinese media are officially secret and government officials refuse to confirm whether online material is blocked.

On Thursday, AlphaGo "thought that Ke Jie played perfectly" for the first 50 moves, Hassabis said at a news conference.

"For the first roughly 100 moves, it is the closest game we have ever seen anyone play against the master version of AlphaGo," he said.

Ke said the computer made unexpected moves after playing more methodically on Tuesday.

"From the perspective of human beings, it stretched a little bit and I was surprised at some points," he said.

"I also thought that I was very close to winning the match in the middle," Ke said. "I could feel my heart thumping. But maybe because I was too excited, I did some wrong or stupid moves. I guess that's the biggest weak point of human beings."

Go players take turns putting white or black stones on a rectangular grid with 361 intersections, trying to capture territory and each other's pieces by surrounding them. The game is considered more difficult than chess for machines to master because the near-infinite number of possible positions requires intuition and flexibility.

This week's games are taking place in a hall where Chinese leaders hold the annual World Internet Conference, an event attended by global internet companies.

China has the world's biggest population of internet users, with some 730 million people online at the end of last year, according to government data.

Censors block access to social media and video-sharing websites such as Facebook and YouTube. Internet companies are required to employ teams of censors to watch social media and remove banned material.

Web surfers can get around online filters using virtual private networks, but Beijing has cracked down on use of those.

Google's AlphaGo A.I. beats world's number one in ancient game of Go

Wuzhen, China -- Computer 1, human 0. The rise of the machine was fully evident Tuesday when a Google computer beat the world's number one player of the ancient Chinese board game Go, signifying a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence.

Global champ Chinese player Ke Jie, lost his first game against Google DeepMind computer program AlphaGo in Wuzhen. With two remaining matches, Ke, 19, could still obliterate AlphaGo and take home $1.5 million in prize money, maintaining his status as the absolute best. But if he loses, that would solidify machine domination in one of the world's most complex games.

Despite defeat in the first match, "this is the greatest honor in a lifetime," Ke said of playing against AlphaGo.

Teaching computers to master Go has long been considered a holy grail for artificial intelligence scientists — there are more possible configurations of the board than there are atoms in the universe. Before this week, AlphaGo had already clocked many victories against top-ranked masters, a significant advancement that happened far sooner than experts expected.

"I've always been optimistic about how far we can go with AI," Dave Silver, lead programmer of AlphaGo at Google DeepMind, told CNBC. "But it happened faster than I think even I would have anticipated – we were able to really discover some beautiful and elegant algorithms … leading to some nice results against the world's strongest players."

This week's games between AlphaGo and Ke are being live streamed by Google online, but Chinese censors already block access to Google and its services, such as Gmail and YouTube, in the country.

Chinese state media outlets were also restricted by authorities from live broadcasting the game, and issued coverage guidelines ahead of the match, according to sources familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified on the record because they weren't authorized to speak in an official capacity.

It was unclear why, given that Go is a Chinese game, and Ke himself is Chinese, though it could be linked to the broader ban on Google in China. A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

The game, Go, originated thousands of years ago in China, and has two players taking turns placing black and white stones on a square board of 19 lines by 19 lines. The object is to take territorial control of the board by surrounding the opponent. Games can go on for hours, and playing requires immense mental stamina, intuition, and strategy.

AlphaGo was trained by studying how human experts have played in the past, Silver said. The program runs a very deep search, sometimes gaming out 50 moves into the future, and uses "this tree of possibilities to work out the best path that will lead to the best possible outcome," Silver said.

This is the kind of technology that Google DeepMind wants to apply elsewhere, to help humans figure out what present decision will lead to the best potential results.

"We're most excited about applying AI to science and medicine … using AI as a tool to improve scientific breakthroughs," Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, told CNBC. "And also to improve healthcare and maybe eventually help with finding cures for diseases or medical diagnostics."

But scary machines aren't going to replace humans entirely just yet. As it stands, computer systems can't replicate things like human emotions and imagination. And Hassabis says there's a long way to go for machines to process higher cognitive functions, like memory, planning, and abstract reasoning.

Still, the technology has come a long way since the 1990s, when software programs first got smart enough to play classic board games, like backgammon. Things peaked with a historic victory of IBM's Deep Blue computer over world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997.

Though not a serious Go player -- Hassabis made his name in his early teens as a world chess champion -- even he hasn't tried to play against AlphaGo.

"There would be no point in me playing AlphaGo," he said. "It's way too strong for me."

Computer game could help children choose healthy food

A simple brain-training game could help children choose healthy snacks instead of chocolate and sweets, according to a new study.

Children who played a seven-minute game devised by University of Exeter psychologists made healthier choices when asked to pick foods afterwards.

The game involves reacting to images of healthy food by pressing a button, and doing nothing if unhealthy foods are shown.

"The sight of foods like chocolate can activate reward centres in the brain at the same time as reducing activity in self-control areas," said Lucy Porter, the lead researcher on the project.

"Our training encourages people to make a new association -- when they see unhealthy food, they stop.

"Many health promotion schemes rely on education and willpower and require a lot of time, staff and money, but our game potentially sidesteps these issues by creating a free, easy tool for families to use at home.

"The research is at an early stage and we need to investigate whether our game can shift dietary habits in the long-term, but we think it could make a useful contribution."

The researchers ran two experiments, and in total more than 200 schoolchildren aged 4-11 were shown images of healthy and unhealthy foods.

Alongside each image was a cartoon face -- happy for healthy food, sad for unhealthy food.

Children had to hit the spacebar when they saw a happy face, and do nothing if they saw a sad face -- they were not told that the game had anything to do with healthy or unhealthy food.

Afterwards, they played a shopping game where they had to choose a limited number of food items in one minute.

"We didn't see a total turnaround in favour of choosing healthy options, but these increased from about 30% of foods chosen to over 50% in children who did the brain training," said Porter.

"Age did not affect whether the game worked or not, meaning that children as young as four can benefit from playing.

Meanwhile children in control groups -- who were shown happy and sad faces mixed evenly between healthy and unhealthy foods, or images which were not food-related at all -- showed no change in food choices.

Similar research by the study's senior author, Dr Natalia Lawrence, has already led to the creation of an app which helps adults avoid unhealthy foods and lose weight.

"It's encouraging to see that this simple computer game has the potential to improve food choices in young children as well as in adults" she said.

"As we all know, it's incredibly important to encourage healthy eating habits from a young age; children in the UK eat on average three times too much sugar and not enough fruit and vegetables.

"This game is one simple and relatively fun way of trying to redress the balance."

Porter added: "This easy game does all the hard work for you. It's not about learning anything consciously, it's about working with automatic responses.

She acknowledges that some people might feel uneasy about this, but she explains: "Playing this game is optional -- unlike the constant stream of advertising designed to brainwash children.

"This game won't eliminate the effect of junk food advertising or price promotions, but it might give people a little bit of control back."