Artificial intelligence beats eight world champions at bridge

Victory marks milestone for AI as bridge requires more human skills than other strategy games

An artificial intelligence has beaten eight world champions at bridge, a game in which human supremacy has resisted the march of the machines until now.

The victory represents a new milestone for AI because in bridge players work with incomplete information and must react to the behaviour of several other players - a scenario far closer to human decision-making.

1996: IBM's Deep Blue chess machine wins a game against world chess champion Garry Kasparov but loses the match 2-4. A year later, Kasparov loses the rematch.

2007: Checkers is solved by researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada. After sifting through 500bn positions, they build a checkers-playing computer programme that can't be beaten.

2011: IBM's Watson computer defeats TV gameshow Jeopardy! champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, claiming the $1m first prize.

2016: Google DeepMind's AlphaGo defeats Korean Go champion Lee Sedol 4-1. The Korea Baduk Association awards AlphaGo the highest Go grandmaster rank, an honorary 9 dan.

2022: NukkAI's bridge-playing computer NooK defeats eight world bridge champions in Paris.