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."

1 of 133 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Prior knowledge of the language is used by jojoba_oil · 2011-07-13 05:22 · Score: 1, Troll

If no prior knowledge of the language is used, how is the program able to determine word boundaries? Perhaps they meant the domain-specific language (meaning vocabulary), for example "unit" and "cell"? Otherwise, there's a plethora of bits of knowledge about English grammar and structure that they probably coded into the AI...
I also find it junk that the web.mit.edu link posts a screenshot of Civ 5, when the AI they are discussing runs against Civ 2... My bullshit meter is starting to tickle.