The First AI to Beat Top Stratego Players at a Game of Hidden Pieces

Stratego is a two-player game of imperfect information: the opponent's piece identities stay hidden, which is why it is used as a benchmark for the strategic thinking of powerful AI models. Researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, New York University and Stanford developed an AI that defeated top-ranked human Stratego players by a large margin — MIT News describes it as something no AI system had achieved before. The interesting part is what has to be inferred. In a game where you cannot see what you are facing, a strong move depends on reading a hidden board rather than one laid out in front of you.