A.I. is about to replace Sheldon, the board game geek, who spends all night explaining a board game that no one is ever going to get.
For decades, there’s been a chunk of carved limestone in a Dutch museum that LOOKED like it could be some kind of game board, but if it was, no one could figure out how it might work. It’s about 1,700 years old, so they couldn’t ask anyone, they just tried to analyze the markings.
Well, archaeologists and computer scientists fed it to A.I., and it came up with several possible ideas. It suggested that it’s a “blocking game,” a type where one player tries to trap the opponent’s pieces until they can no longer move.
Wear marks on the slab support this idea, but it’s still not a 100% guarantee. If it’s true, this would be the earliest relic of this type of game.
The intriguing takeaway from this is: Maybe we’re getting to the point where scientists could walk through museums, showing A.I. a bunch of stuff we don’t understand yet, and have it connect the dots in ways humans haven’t.
