After 5,000 games, Microsoft’s Suphx AI can defeat top Mahjong players

Bolstered by algorithmic breakthroughs and an abundance of cheap computing power, AI has become a veritable games champion, notching wins against the world’s top-ranked players of chess, the Chinese board game Go, Montezuma’s Revenge, and countless others. In yet another victory for the machines this week, Microsoft detailed an AI system — Super Phoenix, or Suphx for short — capable of besting champions at Mahjong.

“For as long as researchers have studied AI, they have worked to build agents capable of accomplishing game missions,” said corporate vice president of Microsoft Asia Pacific R&D Group and MSR Asia Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon. “Mahjong is more complex than other board games, [so] playing becomes an art as well as a science. Good Mahjong players rely on a combination of observation, intuition, strategy, calculation, and chance that presents unique challenges for an AI system.”