With most information hidden, the game Stratego had stumped AI until now(arstechnica.com)
279 points by PaulHoule 11 days ago | 142 comments
tl;dr: Researchers from CMU, MIT, NYU, and Stanford built Ataraxos, an AI that defeated top Stratego player Pim Niemeijer 15-1 (with 4 draws), cracking a game that had resisted even DeepMind's well-funded attempts. Stratego's difficulty stems from massive hidden information (decillions of possible piece setups), game lengths up to 2,000 moves, and the need to balance bluffing. Notably, training required only 16 GPUs and a few thousand dollars.
HN Discussion:
  • •Nostalgic personal memories of playing Stratego as a child
  • ↑The efficiency gains (fewer games, less compute) are the key breakthrough
  • ~Skepticism about the 'just a few thousand dollars' framing given elite institutional backing
  • ↑This result shows the 2022 DeepMind 'mastering' claim was premature
  • ~Static games are inherently beatable; dynamic/evolving games or harder variants remain challenges