Computer Learns Language By Playing Games

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."

A proper job for computers

[jfengel]

Computers have always been good for doing tedious jobs that people don't want to do.

Like reading manuals.

Re:delta between manual and no manual

[Dachannien]

Section 6 of the paper seems to imply that even the most illiterate fool would still win about 30% more games by having a copy of the manual, no matter how illiterate they are.

I just like to look at the pictures.

Re:A strategy to use...

[vlm]

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.

Re:A strategy to use...

[Nadaka]

Indeed, I make daily use of the differences between a partisan, ranseur, glaive, guisarme, glaive-guisarm, guisarm-glaive, lucern hammer, military fork, volge, etc.

Re:My kids learned language playing games too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, double dumb ass on you!

Re:My kids learned language playing games too.

[Bob the Super Hamste]

As far a children learning to swear I learned from my dad. One of my first complete and correct sentences was "Oh fuck this!". I was about one and a half years old and trying to put together a roof rake (it was the summer) and there was a screw and wing nut to hold it together and I just couldn't get it together. So after a little bit I got frustrated and with a piece of the rake in each hand held it up in the air proclaimed "Oh fuck this!", threw it to the ground, and stomped off.

Re:A strategy to use...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rocks and snow, uphill, both ways ... we had it tough I tell you. ;-)

That's what we get for letting Escher on the city planning committee...