The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil

But deep reinforcement learning is not limited to mastering such games. AIs that can play StarCraft II or poker, both of which feature uncertainty and require a sophisticated understanding of rival players in the game, have also recently exceeded the performance of all humans.[86] The only exceptions (for now) are board games that require very high linguistic competencies. Diplomacy is perhaps the best example of this—a world domination game that is impossible for a player to win through luck or skill, and forces players to talk to one another.[87] To win, you have to be able to convince people that moves that help you will be in their own self-interest. So an AI that can consistently dominate Diplomacy games will likely have also mastered deception and persuasion more broadly. But even at Diplomacy, AI made impressive progress in 2022, most notably Meta’s CICERO, which can beat many human players.[88] Such milestones are now being reached almost every week.