Artificial Ignorance

The worst part of playing board games is, hands down, the other players.  A computer player doesn't bail when it starts to lose at Monopoly.  But then computer players usually aren't as challenging as human players.  Go play Monopoly on Pogo.com and you'll see what I mean... the computer is always up for making a sensible, mutually beneficial property trade.  Human players, on the other hand, are belligerent, mean spirited, and incredibly short sighted.  These are the challenges I miss when playing against computer opponents.  Though it may seem strange,  I take no satisfaction in winning a fairly played, completely rational game.  It is far better to relish the demise of a dimwitted human opponent who only knows to express his frustration with misspelled expletives.

Scew u!

Making artificial players less rational is not only good for board games, it may also prove vital for the survival of mankind.  After all, in most science fiction it is the computer's cold, passionless logic that invariably concludes humanity is not only a threat to the computer, but also to itself.  It sees the only rational course of action is to obliterate or enslave the human race.  By instilling in our AI creations the same malicious stupidity that ultimately prevents us mere humans from getting our collective acts together, we may be preventing our eventual enslavement by bad-ass robot overlords of our own design.  And, more importantly, we'll have jerky robot slaves who will play Monopoly whenever we want.

HaHAA!

The bulk of my day is spent pondering how to mechanize human behaviour.  It seems to me that making existing computer players seem more human might not be that difficult.  I'd keep them greedy and cutthroat, but limit their ability to make rational decisions and plan ahead.  That way, they'll never recognize a good Monopoly trade, and they'll be incapable of remaining focused long enough to make us their slaves.