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.

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.