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:

Re:A strategy to use... by vlm · 2011-07-13 05:48 · Score: 5, Funny

in schools? Get kids reading decent manuals (text-books) and perhaps they may actually learn something and find they can do decent things with the new-found knowledge.
This probably dates myself quite accurately, but pretty much, Infocom taught me how to read and type.
It has its side effects, saying "inv" when I look in my wallet, saying "save" before I do something dangerous, but overall it worked pretty well.

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger