It’s All Fun and Games Until The Robot Wins

In 1997, Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov faced off against IBM’s Deep Blue computer for a rematch and lost. Now, developers are changing the way computers play games – they’re not just computing, they’re actually learning!

Are there any games that humans are uniquely skilled to win? We want to hear what you have to say.

Share your thoughts in the comments below!

-------------------------------------------------------

Subscribe to Fw:Thinking:

For the audio podcast, blog and more, visit the Fw:Thinking website:

[dryued]

You missed your chance for an "Over nine thousand" gag. Please turn in your internet badge.

[mastermike]

I think computers will beat us in every closed "solvable" game. Anything with finite numbers of outcomes will naturally give the advantage to computers (which can consider EVERY board state that could exist) over humans (who can only extrapolate a certain amount). Games that revolve around creativity we will likely beat machines at for quite a while if not indefinitely.

[xXsolarXx]

As far as games that are difficult for computers to win, Calvinball is up there.

[LazyMasterGamer]

A YouTuber (Sethbling) used neural networks to teach a computer to play levels of Mario

[vladkostin]

Does it take less computation than brute force approach?? That would be very interesting information!

[patrickbourne]

I think that picturnary is a humans game. Surly it would just be too difficult for a computer to recognize all of the different drawing styles that could be used.

[moople]

Once a computer can beat another, extremely advanced computer at the Turing test; we are screwed

[capivaracafeinada]

Good video :) answering your question at the end of the video, there is a Japanese strategy game called go that deals a lot with pattern recognition to elaborate a good strategy, till this day there is no good algorithm for playing go and all the attempts to make one have failed miserably.

[ThankYouESM]

Thanks Jonathan Strickland for posting so much great info, especially from requests including a few of my own or quite similar.

Would like to know more in detail about radars (maybe incl. sonars) and why the bleep this technology has not already been implemented into our electronic devices to replace those such as touch screens, motion/gesture detectors, even heat sensors. Also... could radars currently work far better than the wi-fi/bt connectivity?

[nauticalex]

Maybe dictionary would be one that a computer might never be able to consistently win, considering the inconsistency of hastily drawn figures.

[Biotune]

"Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his power?" "It's over NINE

[oritemis]

Well, where is the link for this program?

[yamasaa]

No, always let the Wookiee win!
If you know what's good for you...

[joshualonuzzo]

any physical game could be won over by a robot but it's the mental that might be hard for a computur

[tennicktenstyl]

Let the great chess engine battle begin!

[peterdube]

robots will never beat us at flappy bird

[UnpossiblePOG]

In physical games like football, they are way back.

[JordanShackelford]

Right now computers beat everyone at turn-based games. A more modern example is the virtual card game called HearthStone. I used to use a bot to play on my HearthStone account and raise my rank lol.

Computers aren't nearly as good at real-time games like league of legends, but they can assist human players to make them better at the game. There are scripts for league of legends that perform combos for you, dodge abilities for you, and kite for you (kiting is when you move immediately after your champion finishes its auto attack animation).

There is no doubt that computers will eventually be unbeatable at every game. I believe in the future it will not be about who can play the game better, but who can write the best artificial intelligence algorithm for a computer to win the game.

[viktor]

with every new game humans should win against the computer at first

[kingkirby]

Why would thinking about what could happen at the moment be better than analyzing every possible move? Can someone explain? How is our way of playing better? We play on the present while they play in the future right? Meaning, they can think hundreds of moves before us, while we can only think of moves that only possibly occur seconds after we move. How would this be better?