In 2011, it's not rare to read an article regarding a supercomputer that's managed to make use of an algorithm to demolish humans at their own games. After all, they are computers. Why then are you currently reading an article that's concerned with a computer that only wins 79% of the games it plays? Simple: said computer wasn't designed to demolish its inferior, feeble human opponents. This machine learns to play by doing what many gamers often neglect to do. It reads the manual. 

In 2009, Regina Barzilay (associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering) and her team of researchers won an award at the annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics for their system that, in layman's terms, was able to install software on a Windows-based computer simply by reviewing instructions on Microsoft's always useful help site. This year, Barzilay decided to step it up a notch. Her team presented a computer that could learn to play Sid Meier's turn-based strategy game "Civilization" by reading the game's manual. The impressive part: it managed to win 79% of its games. 

How'd the computer manage to bring in more victories than most novices? For starters, the computer "reads" through the same manual players are given. It then begins playing Civilization. As with most beginners, the computer isn't exactly good. This is attested to the fact that the computer is going into the game, relative to the knowledge most system's are given, essentially blind. Barzilay's system is given no prior knowledge of the game. It's simply given the actions (mouse clicks, movement, etc.) it'll need to play the game. As MIT News points out, the computer doesn't even know what actions correspond to what words.

To improve, the computer then uses on screen prompts and information to decipher good moves from bad moves. It relates the words on screen to the words in the manual. The computer makes note of the good results and bad results as to not recreate its missteps. 

The computer won approximately 79% of the game's it played. 

There's no mention of which version of Civilization the computer played or what the specific outcomes were. Fans of the series are undoubtedly familiar with the multiple ways a game of Civilization can end. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a space-based victory. Nothing good can come from a belligerent computer forced to read the manuals we all pass up. 

While this news is certainly interesting, it has merit in the scientific field. As was stated above, what makes the computer's performance so impressive is its lack of prior knowledge. This computer will help validate future research into exploratory learning and environmental interaction. 

But wait, there's more! 

Barzilay believes that this technology could actually improve single-player gaming in the turn-based strategy genre. This system could automatically create algorithms that would outperform the algorithms currently being designed by game developers. 

Thankfully--for those of us worried about the imminent robot takeover--game manuals are steadily becoming extinct. Now that's solace!