A world bridge champion with artificial intelligence

A world bridge champion with artificial intelligence

Published on: 03/27/2022 – 00:27

For two days, eight world bridge champions faced a new generation of artificial intelligence developed by a young French shooter. This card game, based on the cooperation of all participants during a game, still defied the cleverness of AI (Artificial Intelligence) programs. This meeting just demonstrated that a machine is now capable of competing with the collective and collaborative intelligence of humans.

A game of bridge brings together four players who are divided into two opposing teams. Before anyone plays a card, participants take turns bidding on a “contract”. This bid tells your partner the strategy you have chosen to win a certain number of tricks.

If this information are known to all players, but they remain incomplete, unlike, for example, in chess, where the moves of the opponents are constantly visible. So far, artificial intelligence programs have hardly been able to decode this non-verbal communication in order to win any bridge tournament.

But this week, eight world champions of this card game faced a new generation of artificial intelligence developed by the French start-up NukkAI.

Working optimally with people

The aim of this confrontation was not necessarily for the machine to achieve victory, which it did in passing, but to test an intelligent program capable of constantly interacting with humans while explaining its choices and decisions, explains Jean -Baptiste Fantun, co-founder of the young scion NukkAI.

“It’s an explainable type of AI because our approach wasn’t to work on a digital black box, meaning we can make application recommendations and explanations about the outcomes of this program. Our artificial intelligence is not intended to replace people, but to work together with them in the best possible way. And finally, this AI is designed to use as little power as possible,” he says.

Then he adds: “To demonstrate the power of the program, we chose the bridge that comes closest to real-life applications of this AI. Players must make decisions by trying to guess how the cards will be dealt based on the actions of their opponents and partner. And like a bridge game, no one in real life makes a decision with all the data to solve a problem. »

An artificial intelligence with a vocation for accompaniment

“This card game was ideal to test our program, which allows both a confrontation between opponents and a cooperation of all participants, especially at the beginning of the game when each player has to provide information to his partner but also to explain to the opponent. A situation very close to the reality that AIs often face to suggest the best possible decision-making without having all the data of a problem. The artificial intelligence program we have designed will be very useful for all critical areas where, for reasons of responsibility or ethics, the human must always be in control of the decisions made by the machine. Deploying a truly collaborative AI in sensitive sectors is essential for us,” he assures.

This AI was designed for concrete applications that go far beyond the scope of bridge competitions. Capable of communicating and collaborating with its biological partners, this program aims to support sectors such as education, industry, aeronautics, defense, finance and medicine. And all activities that require collegial and coordinated decision-making between man and machine.

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