Computer masters Civilization after reading the instructions

Via geek.com

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Ahh, Watson. Your performance on Jeopardy let the world know that computers were about more than just storing and processing data the way computers always have. Watson showed us all that computers were capable of thinking in very human ways, which is both an extremely exciting and mildly frightening prospect.

A research group at MIT has been working on a project along the same lines — a computer that can process information in a human-like manner and then apply what it’s learned to a specific situation. In this case, the information was the instruction manual for the classic PC game Civilization. After reading the manual, the computer was ready to do battle with the game’s AI. The result: 79% of the time, the computer was victorious.

This is an undeniably impressive development, but we’re clearly not in any real danger until the computer decides to man up and play without reading the instructions like any real gamer would. MIT tried that as well, and while a 46% success rate doesn’t look all that good percentage-wise, it’s pretty darn amazing when you remember this is a computer playing Civilization with no orientation of any kind. I’ve got plenty of friends that couldn’t compete with that, though they all insist it’s because the game was boring and they hated it.

The ultimate goal of the project was to prove that computers were capable of processing natural language the way we do — and actually learning from it, not merely spitting out responses the way an intelligent voice response (IVR) system does, for example. A system like this could one day power something like a tricorder, diagnosing symptoms based on a cavernous cache of medical data. Don’t worry, doctors, it’s going to be a while before computers actually replace you.

News@MIT

The research paper