AI learns the art of Diplomacy

Diplomacy, many a statesperson has argued, is an art: one that requires not just strategy, but also intuition, persuasion, and even subterfuge—human skills that have long been off-limits to even the most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) approaches. Now, an AI algorithm from the company Meta has shown it can beat many humans in the board game Diplomacy, which requires both strategic planning and verbal negotiations with other players. The work, researchers say, could point the way toward virtual exercise coaches and dispute mediators. International chatbot diplomacy may not be far behind. “These are spectacular new results,” says Yoram Bachrach, a computer scientist at DeepMind who has worked on the game Diplomacy but was not involved in the new research. “I’m particularly excited about Diplomacy because it’s an exceptional environment for studying cooperative AI,” in which machines don’t just compete, but collaborate. AI has already bested humans in games of strategy such as chess, Go , poker, and the video game Dota 2 . It is also proving powerful at natural-language processing, in which it can generate humanlike text and carry on conversations . The game of Diplomacy requires both. It involves seven players vying for control of Europe. On each turn, players issue orders regarding the movement of army and naval units, following discussion with other players, whom they can attack or support. Success typi...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news