On March 16, French AI startup NukkAI claimed on Twitter that in the following week, they would host a competition where the research firm would beat eight Bridge world champions. Bridge, unlike Chess or Go, is a more complicated game that involves cooperation and even covert signalling between players. It isn't considered a game in which AI would improve upon a human's performance considerably. In Bridge, opponents aren't aware of the cards that each of them holds, while, in Chess, opponents can make their strategies after observing the other's move. So much so that co-founder of Microsoft and avid bridge player Bill Gates once said that Bridge would be one of the last games where the computer couldn't better the human.

In brief AI algorithms crushed eight world champions playing the card game Bridge, marking another milestone in machine learning systems becoming better than humans at specific games. Top Bridge players were invited to play against NooK, AI software developed by French startup NuukAI, in a tournament over two days in Paris. They battled against one another across 80 rounds, and the machine won 67 sets, beating humans at a rate of 83 per cent, according to The Guardian. NooK is made up of a combination of modern deep learning and older rule-based programmes. NuukAI's co-founder Jean-Baptiste Fantun said the company had developed the software over five years, and its decisions are easier to understand compared to today's black box-like systems.

Champion bridge player Sharon Osberg once wrote, "Playing bridge is like running a business. While it's little surprise chess fell to number-crunching supercomputers long ago, you'd expect humans to maintain a more unassailable advantage in bridge, a game of incomplete information, cooperation, and sly communication. Over millennia, our brains have evolved to read subtle facial queues and body language. We've assembled sprawling societies dependent on the competition and cooperation of millions. Surely such skills are beyond the reach of machines? In recent years, the most advanced AI has begun encroaching on some of our most proudly held territory; the ability to navigate an uncertain world where information is limited, the game is infinitely nuanced, and no one succeeds alone. Last week, French startup NukkAI took another step when its NooK bridge-playing AI outplayed eight bridge world champions in a competition held in Paris. The game was simplified, and NooK didn't exactly go ...

Follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates. PARIS, April 2 -- Several world champion bridge players had to accept defeat at the hands of an artificial intelligence system. A feat never previously achieved. The victories mark an important step in the development of AI, because of its use of'white box' AI, which acquires skills in a more human way, necessary to win at bridge compared to other strategy games such as chess. Until now, to demonstrate the potential of artificial intelligence, humans were pitted against machines.

You are right to acknowledge the work of Donald Michie (full disclosure: I'm his son) on artificial intelligence developing new insights rather than relying on brute force, and on the importance of AI communicating these insights to humans (The Guardian view on bridging human and machine learning: it's all in the game, 30 March). This pioneering work is important for the reasons you explain; it also speaks to debates on whether the rise of the robots will result in them enslaving us. My father argued that it was vital that the robots and AI of the future must be required (programmed) to explain what they were doing and why in terms understandable to humans. Without that, we really will be in trouble – from the routine (why did the driverless car crash?) to the existential. Your editorial was interesting, but NooK, the AI system it discussed, did not play bridge.

Last week an artificial intelligence – called NooK – beat eight world champion players at bridge. That algorithms can outwit humans might not seem newsworthy. IBM's Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. In 2016, Google's AlphaGo defeated a Go grandmaster. A year later the AI Libratus saw off four poker stars.

Bill Gates famously described bridge as'one of the last games in which the computer is not better'. But the Microsoft co-founder will be eating his words this week, following the news that an artificial intelligence bot has managed to beat not just one, but eight world champion bridge players at the game. French startup NukkAI spent four years developing the AI bot, called NooK, which took home the crown at the two-day Nukkai Challenge in Paris last week. In bridge, each of the four players, split into two teams, receives 13 cards in a hand. While other AI systems are typically trained by playing billions of rounds of a game, NooK was trained using a hybrid approach.

An artificial intelligence has beaten eight world champions at bridge, a game in which human supremacy has resisted the march of the machines until now. The victory represents a new milestone for AI because in bridge players work with incomplete information and must react to the behaviour of several other players – a scenario far closer to human decision-making. In contrast, chess and Go – in both of which AIs have already beaten human champions – a player has a single opponent at a time and both are in possession of all the information. "What we've seen represents a fundamentally important advance in the state of artificial intelligence systems," said Stephen Muggleton, a professor of machine learning at Imperial College London. French startup NukkAI announced the news of its AI's victory on Friday, at the end of a two-day tournament in Paris.

This year marks the start of a new decade, and the end of a generation of video games. Sony and Microsoft are set to launch new systems during the holidays, marking the beginning of a new phase in gaming. But that's good news: Traditionally, the games launched at the end of a generation are among that generation's best. Here are the video games we're most looking forward to playing in 2020: Computers, synt-wave, betrayal, and Keanu Reeves -- Cyberpunk 2077 is the most hyped game of the year. Fresh from the success of The Witcher 3, developer CD Projekt Red has gone from medieval fantasy to the dark and gritty world Night City in the year 2077.