Rules-Unknown Artificial Intelligence Competition

OOglyDOOde writes: "This link points to a competition being hosted by a company that makes research on artificial intelligence. The task? Build a program that can play a number of games whose rules are totally unknown -- and earn the best score while competing against various opponents. Your program is told the possible choices available, when it should make a move, what did the opponent do; and what was your score for the last turn. There are no entry fees yet there is a cash prize. Submissions can be done in various languages, or in Linux or Windows binaries." This is certainly one of the odder ones I've ever seen, but has interesting prizes (trip to Israel) and rules (fairly broad entry categories).

Comments

My Statistics Professor Has Already Done This

[omnirealm]

I took a statistics course at BYU. My professor, Dr. Tolley, with the help of his "31337" kids, built an AI system that played Quake. Each possible move was designated as a random variable, and each random variable was weighted according to its success in keeping the player alive and killing the other player. The code would randomly try different actions with the game interface (walk forward, fire weapon, duck, etc.), and then register what worked and what didn't. At first, the computer-controlled player would just stand there. After getting blown apart a few times, it would start jumping to the left, and then ducking, etc. Eventually, it "learned" that it had its greatest chance for survival if it immediately ducked and went behind a box. It then learned to wait until someone walked around a corner, and then it would fire its weapon in the direction of the corner. Finally, it learned that coordinates of the game contained the "respawning" positions, and upon fragging the opponent, it would run to the next respawning point and wait until the player showed up there, blowing him away upon entry into the game.

This code could be similarly adapted to any game, inasmuch as the code can register a table with all the possible moves provided by the interface. It doesn't even have to know what those moves do; it only needs to know if, by doing certain moves according the "state" (or the attributes) of the game, it gains points (or stays alive or whatever) or loses points. The moves are then given a distribution weighting factor. Then, the algorithm just needs to approximate the game state with the registered table entries, determine which moves have the highest "survival rate" based on the current game attributes, and then perform those moves.

Depending on the game, it may take a long time before the random variable distribution table gets populated to the point where the algorithm can make "intelligent" decisions, but it works nonetheless.

Re:I might know how to win or get an unfair advant

[bprotas]

Of course, playing as "badly as they can" implies the same knowledge of the game as playing well, if you want to do better than random chance. To play badly is every much as difficult an AI problem as playing well...

Re:Why not pick a real problem?

[Quixote]

I think the idea is to make an attemp at "meta-learning". In all of the games that you've mentioned, the programmer knows the rules in advance, and the challenge is to see how best to build a system that navigates through those rules. In this contest, the idea is to see how you can capture the "programmers' thinking".

random fortune...

[Pelam]

Probably irrelevant, but a fortune came to my mind when reading that submission:

In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Why is the net wired randomly?", inquired Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play".
At this Minsky shut his eyes, and Sussman asked his teacher "Why do you close your eyes?"
"So that the room will be empty."
At that momment, Sussman was enlightened.

Re:MOD UP!

[MOMOCROME]

I second that. This is a reference to a Koan found in 'Escher, Goedel, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid' by innimitable Douglas Hoffsteder/

Otherwise known as the seminal work of AI philosophy.

This is truly on topic, moreso that the un-enlightened could ever know. ask yourelf: Are my mod points the mod points of the un-enlightened? if no, please mod up the parent's parent as +1, Insightful.

thankyou.

Re:The game is Slashdot, the score is Karma.

[Vryl]

It's not like the entries have to be intelligent. They just have to be logical and well designed, and good at pattern recognition.

All depends on the much debated definition of what is 'Intelligence'.

Certainly, pattern recognition is a sign (symptom?) of intelligence.

So, what are you actually saying? What do you mean when you say 'intelligence' ?

Two thoughts

[Cave Dweller]

1. If I win, do I get a trip to the US? (see email address)
2. I wonder whether the winner could visit me.

:-)

Exercise in neural networks

[slasho81]

After reviewing the challenge rules, I see this challenge as a simple exercise in neural networks coding.

The challenge is so obscure that any entry submitted will have to deploy a very generic NN and a trainer. this basicly means that after enough training any entry would do sufficiently good at any simple game (such as scissors, rock, paper) but playing anything more complex than
that is shooting in the dark. The interface and the rules of the challenge themselves are too obscure.

If there is someone with a code that could win such uncertainty effectively and efficiently, he'd be stupid to submit it for $2000.

Then again I must give a person that can do something extraordinary as that some credit for not doing something that stupid.

How they pay for the prizes...

[A nonymous Coward]

They are playing the STOCK MARKET. They buy stocks according to the various submissions, gradually weed out the bad performers, and end up making a pile, with which they can pay the prize and still have a tidy profit.

Wish I'd thought of it!