MIT Technology Review explores the long-standing role of puzzles and games in artificial intelligence, framing them as a way to test how capable AI models have become. Just as people use crosswords or logic puzzles to challenge themselves, developers use a range of games as a benchmark for model progress.
The piece notes that this connection goes back to the field’s origins, pointing to a 1959 article by IBM computer scientist Arthur Samuel that helped popularize the term “machine learning.”
Why it matters
Using games and puzzles as evaluation tools offers a tangible way to gauge advances in AI, and situating current models against these tests connects present-day systems to decades of prior work.