Psh, wake me when it can play Mao. ;)
Player of Games
71–80 of 242 posts
Re: Player of Games
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: The consensus between professional go and chess players is that all new AI systems (alphago, etc) have really revitalised the game and introduced incredible amount of new strategies and depth.
Sad fact: Lee Sedol retired after AlphaGo defeated him.
Caching out at the height of his fame.
Re: Player of Games
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. (spoiler following) The plot basically revolves around SC manipulating both Gurgeh and the Empire of Azad in an ever bigger and complex game than the one in the book. Given how Banks describes the Minds in other books it would be extremely curious if they wouldn't crush any biological player in any normal game the same way chess computers crush humans these days. But, it is possible that a more limited mind l…
How did I miss this plot point? It's been a while, but I remember focusing on the game Gurgeh played. Maybe I just don't remember it now.
The last page of the book gives it away: (MASSIVE SPOILER OBV) The security drone who came with Gurgeh to Azad was the same drone he meets during the introduction chapters who was "rejected" from SC and offers to let him cheat (though it was wearing a disguise at the time). Then, after he cheats he basically gets blackmailed into going to Azad and conveniently this "non-SC" drone comes with him in a very "non-SC" ship that claims to have its weapons removed but doesn't. At some crucial points the security drone influences Gurgeh to play the best he can, such as when he takes him on a tour of the slums and the Culture-educated Gurgeh gets so furious at the mistreatment he witnesses that he absolutely crushes his opponent in the next match.
They mention in one of the final chapters that the minds wanted the Azad empire to become a better place since it was really shitty to its citizens. However, they couldn't just invade and impose laws because they're the Culture, and the Azad empire kept claiming moral superiority because they had this one thing (the Game) that they thought the Culture couldn't match. The Minds knew Gurgeh was talented enough to get far enough in the tournament that the Azad Empire would be seriously shaken, because if this single foreigner can beat so many of the best and brightest in the Empire at the thing it claims to do best then what could the entire Culture do? This turns out to have been correct, at the end of the book the Azad empire starts to collapse because they no longer trust their leadership, who have been proven to be incompetent at the very thing they claim to do best. Beaten by a human btw, not even by one of the god-machines that the Culture also has. Having predicted that this would happen, the Minds set out to manipulate Gurgeh into going to Azad to play the Game and by doing so bring about regime change. The Minds and/or SC were playing a much higher level game than Gurgeh all along, he was merely one of the pieces they used to play.
Re: Player of Games
#74I want to see deepmind make a bot to play team based first person shooters like csgo and rainbow6 siege, to stack up five of them against a team of professional players.
Honestly that probably won't be too interesting as (a) one AI could perfectly control several agents (ie perfect coordination of global strategies) and (b) an AI has low to no reaction times and perfect aim (aimbots already have that) so I would expect that would quickly result in a slaughterfest.
Re: Player of Games
#75If you are interested in this, I maintain a list of boardgame-solving related research at https://github.com/captn3m0/boardgame-research , with sections for specific games. This looks really interesting. It would be a good project to test this against a general card-playing framework to easily test it on a variety of imperfect-information games based on playing cards.
I tried my hand once or twice at (re-)implementing board games [0], so that I could run some common "AI" algorithms on the game trees. What tripped me up every time is that most board games have a lot of "if this happens, there is this specific rule that applies". Even relatively simple games (like Homeworlds) are pretty hard to nail down perfectly due to all the special cases. Do you, or somebody else, have any reco…
Dominion and Homeworlds are pretty complicated! Maybe you can start with a simpler game like Splendor.
In my 2-player Splendor rules engine, the following actions are possible:
1. Purchase a holding. (90 possible actions, one for each holding)
2. If you do not have 3 reserved cards, reserve a card and take a gold chip if possible. (93 possible actions, one for each holding and one for each deck of facedown cards)
3. If there are 4 chips of the same color in a pile, take 2 chips of that color. (5 possible actions)
4. Take 3 chips of different colors, or 2 chips of different colors if only 2 are available, or 1 chip if only 1 is available. (25 possible actions)
5. If after any action you have at least 11 chips, return 1 chip. (6 possible actions which are never legal at the same time as any other actions)
This still doesn't correctly implement the rules though. In the actual game, you'd be allowed to spend gold chips when you don't need to, which would make purchasing holdings contain extra decisions after you pick which holding to purchase about which chips you'd like to keep.
Re: Player of Games
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, to explain the joke. The ships name themselves, and when they pick jokey names they're often mocked by the humans (which are in every way essentially ants to the spaceships) for not having enough gravitas. So the ships start naming themeselves things like the "Death-ray 9000 super-killer deluxe", to essentially take the piss. Funnily enough you can see the exact same effect in principal game-engineers or compu…
I believe the user you are replying to was also joking, given that many of Banks' ship names reference the g-word Edit: if not that's even more amusing
I'll make a minor contribution to the discussion by mentioning the Culture ship normally referred to as the Mistake Not..., which is shorthand for
"Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath".
Unsure if this name is also a sarcastic stab that the lack of gravitas in ships' names, but regardless it's very sad that Banks died young :(
Re: Player of Games
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did I miss this plot point? It's been a while, but I remember focusing on the game Gurgeh played. Maybe I just don't remember it now.
The last page of the book gives it away: (MASSIVE SPOILER OBV) The security drone who came with Gurgeh to Azad was the same drone he meets during the introduction chapters who was "rejected" from SC and offers to let him cheat (though it was wearing a disguise at the time). Then, after he cheats he basically gets blackmailed into going to Azad and conveniently this "non-SC" drone comes with him in a very "non-SC" shi…
Ahh, thank you! Now that you recount it, it all comes back to me. I should read more Banks, he's a fantastic writer.
Re: Player of Games
#78Anyone else surprised to see that Demis Hassabis didn't have a hand in this research? Given his background as a player of many games, and involvement in a lot of their research.
Re: Player of Games
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: The consensus between professional go and chess players is that all new AI systems (alphago, etc) have really revitalised the game and introduced incredible amount of new strategies and depth.
Sad fact: Lee Sedol retired after AlphaGo defeated him.
3 years after...
Re: Player of Games
#80I want to see deepmind make a bot to play team based first person shooters like csgo and rainbow6 siege, to stack up five of them against a team of professional players.
Honestly that probably won't be too interesting as (a) one AI could perfectly control several agents (ie perfect coordination of global strategies) and (b) an AI has low to no reaction times and perfect aim (aimbots already have that) so I would expect that would quickly result in a slaughterfest.
"...such consummate skill, such ability, such adaptability, such numbing ruthlessness, such a use of weapons when anything could become weapon..."