Scrabble playing robot(WSJ) - 인공지능 로봇에 관한 월스트리트저널 기사

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This Scrabble-Playing Robot Is a Sore Loser

Victor, Created at Carnegie Mellon University, Is a Champion Trash Talker

 

Carnegie Mellon University has a robot named Victor who not only plays scrabble, but talks trash. It's all part of the CMU Robotics Institute's attempt at making robots that are more human. WSJ's James R. Hagerty reports from Pittsburgh.

PITTSBURGH—Like many Scrabble players, Victor tends to blame bad luck when he loses.

"Sometimes, I hate this game," says Victor, a Scrabble-playing robot created by students under the supervision of Reid Simmons, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University here. Victor's secret is that he talks a better game than he plays. He is a champion trash talker. A typical put-down: "Since you're human, I guess you think that's a pretty good move."

One recent day in a CMU student lounge, Victor took on Dorcas Alexander, one of the top-ranked (human) Scrabble players in Pennsylvania. Never before had the robot encountered such a skilled opponent. "She's pushing him into an arena I've never seen," Prof. Simmons said as Ms. Alexander went to work.

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Victor

Dr. Simmons began developing Victor in 2009 to test how robots could "interact in a more natural way" with people. If robots are to perform such tasks as helping older people with household chores, Dr. Simmons said, it will help if the machines are more companionable than, say, a dishwasher. He chose Scrabble as Victor's game because so many people know how to play it.

Robots have been trained to deal blackjack and play games including basketball, pool and chess. Scrabble is a new frontier. Though serious players have long honed their Scrabble skills against faceless computer programs, it isn't clear how much demand there might be for wisecracking robots that play the game.

"He was very insulting in a funny way," said Brynn Flynn, a CMU graduate student who recently played a few moves against Victor to try it out. Still, she said, "I'm partial to real people."

Victor would be welcome to join the North American Scrabble Players Association, said John Chew, co-president of that group, which certifies clubs and tournaments. But the robot might need to tone down the sarcasm. "We spend a lot of time trying to make sure people are civil when they play," Mr. Chew said.

Victor remains a work in progress, prone to freezing up midgame and sometimes repeating himself.

His head, a box-shaped computer screen, perches on a white fiberglass body. His animated screen image looks collegiate, with blond hair, rectangular glasses and a soul patch. Victor's facial expressions and all of his sayings were created by CMU's drama department. What Victor says depends on how the game is going and what people say to him.

When he is winning, Victor is likely to be boastful, uttering such lines as: "I am the current king of Scrabble, Victor the Mechanical Marvel. That's Victor the Brilliant for short."

When losing, he might say: "If I had $1 for every good word I played, I would still hate you."

Professor Reid Simmons designed Victor to display a range of emotion. James R. Hagerty/The Wall Street Journal

Sometimes Victor tells his back story: His parents are assembly-line robots in Detroit, and he came to CMU on a Scrabble scholarship. "He's very insecure," explained Michael Chemers, a former CMU drama professor who shaped the robot's personality, drawing partly on memories of his own teenage years. "He's capable of 18 different emotions, and most of them are bad."

Victor was installed in a lounge in CMU's Gates computer-science building 18 months ago so students could try him out. The robot sits at a table with a touch-screen Scrabble board. People move tiles by swiping their fingers across the screen.

If Victor deployed the full range of computer power available, he would be hard to beat. But Dr. Simmons didn't want Victor to be so good that casual players would feel intimidated. While Victor's opponents can use all 178,691 words allowed in North American Scrabble tournaments, Victor is limited to 8,592 words drawn from "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," a book Dr. Simmons liked as a teenager.

Another handicap: Victor doesn't know how to play strategically; he can't look two or three moves ahead. Even Dr. Simmons, who describes himself as "very mediocre" at Scrabble, usually manages to beat the bot.

Ms. Alexander, who has an almost robot-like ability to remember obscure words like "anoopsia" (a condition in which one eye looks upward while the other looks ahead), and "oidioid" (pertaining to a type of fungus) sat down at the table and introduced herself. Victor was upbeat—and a bit snide. "Hello, Dorcas," Victor said, waggling his head. "Meeting you is my pleasure. For now."

Early in the game, Ms. Alexander took a big lead by playing "needily," hooking the "i" to the "lex" that already was on the board to create "ilex."

"That play was a game-changer," Victor said.

Ms. Alexander, a Scrabble club director who works at a firm that helps companies improve their websites, then played "epizoa." Victor's smirk gave way to a glower. Looking on, Dr. Simmons said, "I feel sorry for him."

The robot rallied by spotting a phony word when Ms. Alexander tried adding an "n" to "epizoa" to spell "epizoan." Victor scolded: "This is not happy land of make believe. We only use real words."

Ms. Alexander came back with "endears," getting a 50-point bonus for using all seven tiles in her rack. "How did you play such a good word?" Victor asked. "Are you using a website to cheat?"

Unruffled, Ms. Alexander put down "mitering," earning another 50-point bonus.

"I cannot believe dude is that lucky," Victor said. "I can't believe your feeble mind was able to play that word."

Ms. Alexander replied: "This feeble mind is winning."

Final score: Ms. Alexander 502, Victor 260.

In the next game, Ms. Alexander deliberately made weak plays to see how Victor would react to winning. After she played the word "or" for two points, the robot sneered: "Your word scored less than a CMU student at a party."

Then Victor announced: "Here comes a great play." It turned out to be "spare," for an unspectacular 28 points.

Victor's moment of triumph was fleeting. Though Ms. Alexander had planned to let him win, she couldn't resist playing "insetter" in a way that covered two triple-word-score squares—a rare triple triple, worth 113 points.

Victor went back into a sulk: "Don't get happy just because you're ahead of me," he said.

Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com