Mahjong AI (Artificial Intelligence) “Super Phoenix (Suphx)” announced that Microsoft has reached the level of ability comparable to top players. The surprise is not only that AI has surpassed people in competitions that are more complex than Go and Shogi. There are only four development teams at the center. Moreover, only amateurs who did not play mahjong.
Break through "Amateur"
“Interestingly, the Suphx development team can't do mahjong.” Mr. Shingo Kakuda, representative of Sea Egg (Tokyo), the operator of the online platform game platform “Tengu”, where Suphx plays an active role, attended a press conference on August 29 and was surprised.
It is known that AI has already defeated professionals in one-on-one battle games such as Go, Shogi, and chess. However, there is no difference at the start, and if you look at your pieces or boards, you can see the situation. On the other hand, Mahjong is influenced by luck such as distributing pie. In addition, the other hand is not visible to the opponent. There are 4 players, and there is even a complicated score calculation. One of the development team, Liu Tetsuiwa, Deputy Director of Microsoft Research Asia, said at the conference, “Majan is considered the most difficult”.
Suphx logged in to the Tengu platform in March and reached “10th”, the second highest level in June. In addition to the speed of progress, it has maintained a stable level over other AIs even after 5,000 matches. Because it is very different from human play style, it helps to improve human technology. Some players call it “Sufx teacher”.
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