Computer watches then learns to play games

A French scientist says he's developed software that allows a computer to learn how to play a game the same way a human does -- by watching other people play. Lukas Kaiser, who studies logic and games at Paris Diderot University, says computers can learn to play games such as Connect 4 and tic-tac-toe by watching videos of humans playing. Standard image-processing tools allow the computer to recognize changes in the separate board squares and pieces of a game and learn the rules by logging what the board looks like when a game has been won, and what count as legal moves, NewScientist.com reported Tuesday. Once the software has mastered the rules, it plays the game by examining all possible moves and choosing those it deems most likely to lead to a win, Kaiser said. Its level of performance depends on the complexity of the game. In a game like Connect 4 with few possibilities for moves, humans have a hard time beating the trained computer, he said.