For those who didn’t know, Stanford is offering some online courses, starting from next month. During my graduation I already have some AI classes but I thought it would be interesting to participate in this class with thousand of students.

One area that I like on AI is the on to teach computers how to play games. I like that so much that during my AI classes in Politecnico di Milano I developed a computer game to play tic-tac-toe in NxNxN dimensions. It’s actually fun to play, and you can find some screenshots (and the code) on a past blog post. I didn’t have time to continue maintaining it, but the part that I liked more was actually designing the algorithm, using MinMax, and eventually finding out that I couldn’t win the game anymore when playing against the computer. This was both motivating and demotivating because I knew that if I did developed it right, I couldn’t possibly win anymore. Maybe I’ll update this project when I have some time. If you would like to try it and find any problem, send me a patch and I will happily apply. If you think you have a better algorithm, it’s very easy to develop your own Player and plug it in the game. I challenge you to win my MinMax player ;-).

During the time I was developing this game, a friend of mine that lived with me in Italy had a dream of making money playing poker. Because of this he was attending the AI classes too and eventually playing online to develop his strategies (in sites such as partypoker). It was very fun talking to him and his plans and strategies, though I don’t know if he succeeded.

Even if you frequented some AI class before like me and my friend, I think it will be very interesting to participate on this one. If you didn’t register yet, you still have some time: go to http://www.ai-class.com and subscribe.