Computer Learns Language By Playing Games

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday July 13, 2011 @05:12AM from the did-you-just-teach-computers-how-to-conquer-the-world dept.

Frans Faase writes "By basing its strategies on the text of a manual, a computer infers the meanings of words without human supervision. The paper Learning to Win by Reading Manuals in a Monte-Carlo Framework (PDF) explains how a computer program succeeds in playing Civilization II using the official game manual as a strategy guide. This manual uses a large vocabulary of 3638 words, and is composed of 2083 sentences, each on average 16.9 words long. By this the program improves it success rate from 45% to 78% in playing the game. No prior knowledge of the language is used."

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Better at manuals than my wife... by digitalsolo · 2011-07-13 05:17 · Score: -1, Flamebait

So they've managed to create software that can process a manual, with a language it does not already understand, more effectively than my wife.

Impressive. Now they need to make it reiterate the manual in a way that she can understand.

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Just another ignorant American.