Games of different kinds have long been used as a testing ground for artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
The first time that an AI beat a human chess grandmaster was a huge milestone, and machines have also learned to play the more complex Chinese strategy game Go.
They have also been learning how to master a number of video games, including titles such as StarCraft II that are played competitively in the esports arena.
The WWI board game Diplomacy poses particular challenges to AI, as it not only relies on strictly ruled moves, but also provides the option for negotiation and – as the name suggests – diplomacy.
Researchers at Meta had designed an AI that was able to play the basic elements of the game in a simplified version that did not include player-to-player negotiation.
It did so partly through machine learning trial and error and partly through copying moves made by human players.
Now, the team has added a capacity for language to the AI, known as Cicero, that allows it to interpret and generate messages.
This, in turn, allows Cicero to make alliances and coordinate moves and attacks, just as a human player would.
They started the new part of the project with a pre-trained system that was already capable of analysing human language.
AI was trained with close to 13 million messages
They trained it further with nearly 13 million messages sent by human players across more than 40,000 games of Diplomacy.
This gave Cicero the added ability to work out what opponents and allies were planning to do based on the content of their messages and to plan its own moves accordingly.
It was also able to generate its own messages that advanced its goals in the game.
The AI was anonymously entered into 40 games being conducted online by a human league of Diplomacy enthusiasts.
Over 72 hours of gameplay, it sent a total of 5,277 messages without being identified as an AI or anything other than another human player.
According to the researchers, only one player voiced a suspicion that they might have been playing a bot during a post-game chat.
Additionally, Cicero ranked in the top 10% of players across all the games, using a combination of its strategic and language processing skills.
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