AAAI-13 International General Game Playing Competition

AAAI-13 International General Game Playing Competition

General game players are computer systems able to play strategy games based solely on formal game descriptions supplied at "runtime." (In other words, they don't know the rules until the game starts.) Unlike specialized game players, such as Deep Blue, general game players cannot rely on algorithms designed in advance for specific games; they must discover such algorithms themselves. General game playing expertise depends on intelligence on the part of the game player and not just intelligence of the programmer of the game player.

General game playing is an interesting application in its own right. It is intellectually engaging and more than a little fun. But it is much more than that. It provides a theoretical framework for modeling discrete dynamic systems and for defining rationality in a way that takes into account problem representation and complexities like incompleteness of information and resource bounds. It has practical applications in areas where these features are important, for example, in business and law. More fundamentally, it raises questions about the nature of intelligence and serves as a laboratory in which to evaluate competing approaches to artificial intelligence.

Competition

The competition will consist of two phases. On Tuesday, July 16, players will participate in preliminary rounds. On Wednesday, July 17, the top four finishers from the preliminary rounds will participate in semifinal and final rounds to determine an overall winner. As in past few years, there will be a Carbon versus Silicon contest at the end of the competition, pitting the new champion against a human in a best of 3 match.

The competition is open to the public with the exception of affiliates of Stanford University. In order to participate, teams must register by June 30 by sending email to the organizers listed below. Participants should check this page periodically for updates. To encourage participation, an entry fee will not be charged. Onsite competition participants will be admitted to the competition and exhibit areas but not to the technical or social events of the main conference. Finalists are encouraged to register for the AAAI-13 conference to attend research presentations and events relevant to the topics of the competition.

Organizers

Gabe Alvarez
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Email: galvare2@stanford.edu

Dustin Fink
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Email: dsfink@stanford.edu

Michael Genesereth
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Email: genesereth@stanford.edu

For More Information

For more information, please see games.stanford.edu for details specific to this year's competition.

Links