Computers mastered chess decades ago, and now they’re searching for more complicated games with more elementally-charged monsters to entertain them. The Pokémon Company is seeking data scientists and AI engineers that can teach artificial intelligence how to play the Pokémon TCG, and it’s prepared to pay big bucks if you do it properly.
A contest on Google’s data science competition platform Kaggle has a massive prize pool up for grabs for anyone who can teach a computer how to think about type matchups, timing, and the moves their opponent might make.
When the competition closes on September 14, the top 8 teams or individuals receive $30,000 each and progress to a second round, fighting for a $50,000 grand prize. Although the race has only been open for a few hours, and has not been widely publicised, hundreds have already signed up. Right now you can already go and see their AI agents battling it out in TPC’s specially provided simulator, like some kind of Pokémon-based ant farm. It seems they’ll be competing to be the very best there for the next couple of months.
While the competition is open to anyone (barring a few sanctioned regions like North Korea), at time of writing, it’s only been officially announced outside of Kaggle through Pokémon’s Japanese YouTube channel. A new Japanese website explains the concept further with an FAQ.
Essentially, there are two parts to the contest. The simulation category has no prize, but gives contestants the opportunity to improve their understanding, as teams submit AI training agents for continuous matches played out on Kaggle. To win the strategy category, and the cash prize, “teams must submit a report detailing the strategic logic behind the AI Training Agent submitted to the Simulation Category”.
While The Pokémon Company hasn’t said why they want a computer that can play Pokémon, beyond the noble goal of to “promote and further the field of data science” it seems like there could be some fairly obvious practical applications. Perhaps it could be used to upgrade the fairly barebones singleplayer element of PTCG Live, or to efficiently test out new mechanics and Pokémon cards during development.
Source: Wargamer
