Google's AI Challenge

Google sponsored an AI challenge this fall.  The goal was to build a player for a game that would beat all other players.  The game was called Planet Wars and ran in a 2-dimensional universe with a random set of planets.  Each player gets 100 member army and the goal is to capture and hold as many planets as possible.  You can see the rules and a demo of the game here.

Over 4600 people from all over the world competed including three of our students:  David Kelly led coming in 1328th.  Emily Bruckart was 1790th and Rob Koch was 1544th.

This is a great example of our students pursuing interesting things on their own.  I had no idea this was going on until David posted his result on FaceBook.  I'm really proud that our students are this engaged.  However, I wish I had been able to compete, too!