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Researcher details method for teaching computers to win at board games through short training videos
All right, hotshot -- sure, you can trounce your five-year-old niece in a round of Connect Four, but are you ready to do battle with a machine? Łukasz Kaiser of Paris Diderot University in France has detailed a method for teaching computers how to learn relatively simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe, Breakthrough and the aforementioned eternal vertical struggle between checker pieces, using quick videos generally under two minutes in length. "The presented algorithm requires only a few demonstrations and minimal background knowledge," Kaiser explains, in his paper Learning Games from Videos Guided by Descriptive Complexity, "and, having learned the rules, automatically derives position evaluation functions and can play the learned games competitively." Kaiser adds, having taken on the world of Tic-Tac-Toe and other relatively simple games that, "there is strong theoretical evidence that it will generalize to other problems." Now if only we can sum up the world's issues Connect Four-style, we should be covered.
EA bringing Battleship, Connect 4, Monopoly to iPhone
EA is getting good mileage out of this Hasbro deal. The latest platform to be assaulted with family-friendly adaptations of classic board games is the iPhone and iPod Touch, with Battleship, Connect 4 and Monopoly Classic en route from EA Mobile. There's no word on prices or release date as of right now, but we'll be sure to pass that news along once it's available. In the meanwhile, feel free to head into the gallery below to check out screens from each title. If you're reading Joystiq on an iPhone, you can totally pretend you're playing the games! %Gallery-76840% %Gallery-76841% %Gallery-76842%
