This reading seminar covers machine learning, evolutionary, and neural computational approaches to games and other competitive environments. This is broadly defined to include classic board games like TTT, Checkers, Chess and Backgammon, abstract mathematical games, such as the prisoner's dilemma and pursuer-evader differential games, artificial life situations, and even video-like games.
Topics and readings include: Basic Game Theory, touching on classic matrix games in biological, social and economic and military systems, the basic AI programming approaches to board games, as well as machine learning, neural computational, evolutionary and co-evolutionary computation in the setting of both abstract and creative competitive environments. Student work involves group presentation and written critical revies of material from the literature, and a term project.
| Date | Topic | Presented By | Reviewed By |
| 2/5 | Axelrod Ch. 1-3, 8 | Ficici | Raymond |
| 2/7 | Axelrod GA paper | Shubina Rozier |
Helfgott Spitz |
| 2/12 | Lindgren | Melnick Funes |
Raisbeck Zhao |
| 2/14 | Maynard Smith/Axelrod Ch. 5 | Kitts Helfgott |
Raymond Sanders |
| 2/26 | Isaacs, Differential Games | Raisbeck Peng Zhao |
Helfgott Funes |
| 2/28 | Miller and Cliff, PE Game | Werger Sanders |
Sanchez |
| 3/4 | Reynolds, PE Tag | Ficici Kozubal Kontoglis |
Shubina Raisbeck |
| 3/6 | Koza, PE/Pacman | Sanchez Stux |
Funes Spitz |
| 3/11 | Pengi & Rogomatic | Shubina Sanders Laurence |
Werger Ficici Kontoglis |
| 3/13 | Bolo/Bolo Brains | Raymond Kozubal |
Stux Peng Laurence |
| 3/18 | Samuels 1, Checkers | Rozier Stux Zhao |
Sanchez Kozubal |
| 3/20 | Samuels 2, Checkers | Werger Spitz Kontoglis |
Shubina Peng |
| 3/25 | Epstein, HOYLE | Helfgott Blair |
Rozier Sanders |
| 3/27 | Berliner, BKG | Laurence Peng |
Ficici Kontoglis |
| 4/1 | Tesauro, TD-Gammon | Raisbeck Funes |
Laurence Zhao |
| Pollack, HC-Gammon | Juille Spitz |
Rozier Stux | |
| 4/15 | Sims, Robot Game | Raymond Sanchez |
Werger Kozubal |
| Date | Presented By |
| 4/17 | Shubina Rozier Ficici |
| 4/22 | Helfgott Funes Kontaglis Spitz Raymond Peng |
| 4/29 | Kozabal Sanders Zhao Sanchez Lawrence Werger |
Agre, P. and Chapman, D. (1987). Pengi: An implementation of a theory of activity. In Proceedings National Conference on AI, pages 268-272.
Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. Basic Books, New York.
Axelrod, R. (1987). The evolution of strategies in the iterated prisoner's dilemma. In Davis, L., editor, Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing. Pitman: London.
Berliner, H.J. (1980). Backgammon program beats world champion. In Artificial Intelligence, 14:205-220.
Epstein, S.L. (1994). Toward an ideal trainer. Machine Learning, 15(3).
Issacs, R. (1965). Differential Games. John Wiley & Sons.
Koza, J. (1992). Genetic Programming. MIT Press, Cambridge.
Lindgren, K. (1992). Evolutionary phenomena in simple dynamics. In C.Langton, C.Taylor, J.F. and Rasmussen, S., editors, Artificial Life II. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
Mauldin, M.L., Jacobson, G.J., Appel, A.W., and Hamey, L. G.C. (1984). Rogomatic: A belligerent expert system. In Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference of Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence.
Miller, G.F. and Cliff, D. (1994). Protean behavior in dynamic games. In D.Cliff, P. Husbands, J. Meyer. S.W., editor, From Animals to Animats 3: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior.
Pollack, J., Blair, A., and Land, M. (1995). Coevolution of a backgammon player. Technical report.
Reynolds, Craig W. (1994). Competition, coevolution, and the game of tag. In Proceedings of the Fourth Artificial Life Conference. MIT Press.
Samuel, A.L. (1959). Some studies of machine learning using the game of checkers. IBM Joural of Research and Development.
Samuel, A.L. (1967). Some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers. II - recent progress. IBM Journal of Research & Development, 11(4):601-618.
Sims, Karl (1994). Evolving 3d morphology and behavior by competition. In Proceedings of the fourth Artificial Life Conference. MIT Press.
Smith, J.M. (1982). Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge University Press.
Tesauro, G. (1992). Practical issues in temporal difference learning. Machine Learning, 8:257-277.
Jay Scott from Swarthmore has been collecting URL's on machine learning in games.
Stephen Intille was the source for some material on Bolo.
There are free GP simulators (in C) available on the net, like Lil-gp and SGPC, which is in the GA-LIST library.
Professor Roger McCain of Drexel University has some nice notes on Game Theory
Anything one wants to know about video games begins here.