Facebook taught an AI the 'theory of mind'

When it comes to competitive games, AI systems have already shown they can easily mop the floor with the best humanity has to offer. But life in the real world isn't a zero sum game like poker or Starcraft and we need AI to work with us, not against us. That's why a research team from Facebook taught an AI how to play the cooperative card game Hanabi (the Japanese word for fireworks), to gain a better understanding of how humans think. Specifically, the Facebook team set out to instill upon its AI system the theory of mind. "Theory of mind is this idea of understanding the beliefs and intentions of other agents or other players or humans," Noam Brown, a researcher at Facebook AI, told Engadget.