UNIT-4 :

Slot –and-Filler Structures Semantic Nets, Frames, and Conceptual Dependency. Game playing overview,
The Mini-max search Procedure, Adding Alpha-Beta Cutoffs, Additional Refinements, Iterative
Deepening.

Slot-Filler Structures: The Slot and Filler Structure is a common framework used in Natural Language
Processing (NLP) and Knowledge Representation to handle structured information. It is particularly
useful in tasks such as dialogue systems, information extraction, and semantic parsing.

The Slot-Filler Structure represents knowledge as a set of slots (predefined categories or variables) that are filled
with values (actual data).

 Slots → Act as placeholders for different types of information.

 Fillers → The actual values assigned to those slots.

Example: Flight Booking System

A chatbot for flight booking may have slots like:

Slot Filler (Value)

Departure City New York
Destination City Los Angeles
Date April 5, 2025
Class Economy
Passenger Name John Doe

Here, the slot "Departure City" has the filler "New York", and so on.
Game Playing in AI: An Overview

AI in game playing involves developing systems that can play, learn, and master games through
algorithms, machine learning, and decision-making models. This field has been instrumental in
advancing AI research, particularly in search algorithms, reinforcement learning, and deep learning.

1. Types of Games in AI
(A) Deterministic vs. Stochastic Games

 Deterministic Games → No randomness; outcomes are fully determined by player actions.

o Example: Chess, Checkers, Go.
 Stochastic Games → Include elements of chance (e.g., dice rolls, random draws).
o Example: Poker, Backgammon, Monopoly.

(B) Perfect vs. Imperfect Information Games

 Perfect Information → All players have full knowledge of the game state.
o Example: Chess, Go, Tic-Tac-Toe.
 Imperfect Information → Players have limited knowledge (e.g., hidden cards).
o Example: Poker, StarCraft, Among Us.

(C) Single-Player vs. Multi-Agent Games

 Single-Player Games → AI optimizes a solution for a given task (e.g., Pac-Man, Tetris).
 Multi-Agent Games → AI competes against humans or other AIs (e.g., StarCraft, Poker).

2. AI Techniques in Game Playing

(A) Search-Based Methods (Used in Board Games)

1. Minimax Algorithm → Evaluates all possible moves, assuming both players play optimally.
2. Alpha-Beta Pruning → Optimized Minimax that eliminates unnecessary branches.
3. Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) → Uses random simulations to decide moves (used in Go & AI-
driven board games).

(B) Machine Learning & Deep Learning (Used in Complex Games)

1. Supervised Learning → AI is trained on human gameplay data.

2. Reinforcement Learning (RL) → AI learns by trial and error, optimizing rewards.
o Deep Q-Networks (DQN) → Used in Atari games.
o AlphaZero → Uses self-play to learn games like Chess and Go.
3. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) → Recognize patterns and predict optimal moves.
(C) Evolutionary & Genetic Algorithms

 AI evolves strategies by simulating "natural selection."

 Used in evolving AI agents for complex decision-making.

Mini-Max Algorithm:
o Mini-max algorithm is a recursive or backtracking algorithm which is used in decision-making and
game theory. It provides an optimal move for the player assuming that opponent is also playing
optimally.
o Mini-Max algorithm uses recursion to search through the game-tree.
o Min-Max algorithm is mostly used for game playing in AI. Such as Chess, Checkers, tic-tac-toe, go,
and various tow-players game. This Algorithm computes the minimax decision for the current state.
o In this algorithm two players play the game, one is called MAX and other is called MIN.
o Both the players fight it as the opponent player gets the minimum benefit while they get the
maximum benefit.
o Both Players of the game are opponent of each other, where MAX will select the maximized value
and MIN will select the minimized value.
o The minimax algorithm performs a depth-first search algorithm for the exploration of the complete
game tree.
o The minimax algorithm proceeds all the way down to the terminal node of the tree, then backtrack
the tree as the recursion.

Working of Min-Max Algorithm:

o The working of the minimax algorithm can be easily described using an example. Below we have
taken an example of game-tree which is representing the two-player game.
o In this example, there are two players one is called Maximizer and other is called Minimizer.
o Maximizer will try to get the Maximum possible score, and Minimizer will try to get the minimum
possible score.
o This algorithm applies DFS, so in this game-tree, we have to go all the way through the leaves to
reach the terminal nodes.
o At the terminal node, the terminal values are given so we will compare those value and backtrack
the tree until the initial state occurs. Following are the main steps involved in solving the two-player
game tree:

Step-1: In the first step, the algorithm generates the entire game-tree and apply
the utility function to get the utility values for the terminal states. In the below tree
diagram, let's take A is the initial state of the tree. Suppose maximizer takes first
turn which has worst-case initial value =- infinity, and minimizer will take next turn
which has worst-case initial value = +infinity.
Step 2: Now, first we find the utilities value for the Maximizer, its initial
value is -∞, so we will compare each value in terminal state with initial value
of Maximizer and determines the higher nodes values. It will find the
maximum among the all.

o For node D max(-1,- -∞) => max(-1,4)= 4

o For Node E max(2, -∞) => max(2, 6)= 6
o For Node F max(-3, -∞) => max(-3,-5) = -3
o For node G max(0, -∞) = max(0, 7) = 7
Step 3: In the next step, it's a turn for minimizer, so it will compare all nodes
value with +∞, and will find the 3rd layer node values.

o For node B= min(4,6) = 4

o For node C= min (-3, 7) = -3
Step 4: Now it's a turn for Maximizer, and it will again choose the maximum
of all nodes value and find the maximum value for the root node. In this
game tree, there are only 4 layers, hence we reach immediately to the root
node, but in real games, there will be more than 4 layers.

o For node A max(4, -3)= 4

That was the complete workflow of the minimax two player game.

Properties of Mini-Max algorithm:

o Complete- Min-Max algorithm is Complete. It will definitely find a solution (if exist), in the finite
search tree.
o Optimal- Min-Max algorithm is optimal if both opponents are playing optimally.
o Time complexity- As it performs DFS for the game-tree, so the time complexity of Min-Max
algorithm is O(bm), where b is branching factor of the game-tree, and m is the maximum depth of
the tree.
o Space Complexity- Space complexity of Mini-max algorithm is also similar to DFS which is O(bm).

Limitation of the minimax Algorithm:

The main drawback of the minimax algorithm is that it gets really slow for
complex games such as Chess, go, etc. This type of games has a huge
branching factor, and the player has lots of choices to decide. This limitation
of the minimax algorithm can be improved from alpha-beta pruning
 Alpha-Beta Pruning
o Alpha-beta pruning is a modified version of the minimax algorithm. It is an optimization technique
for the minimax algorithm.
o As we have seen in the minimax search algorithm that the number of game states it has to examine
are exponential in depth of the tree. Since we cannot eliminate the exponent, but we can cut it to
half. Hence there is a technique by which without checking each node of the game tree we can
compute the correct minimax decision, and this technique is called pruning. This involves two
threshold parameter Alpha and beta for future expansion, so it is called alpha-beta pruning. It is
also called as Alpha-Beta Algorithm.
o Alpha-beta pruning can be applied at any depth of a tree, and sometimes it not only prune the tree
leaves but also entire sub-tree.
o The two-parameter can be defined as:

a. Alpha: The best (highest-value) choice we have found so far at any point along the path of
Maximizer. The initial value of alpha is -∞.
b. Beta: The best (lowest-value) choice we have found so far at any point along the path of
Minimizer. The initial value of beta is +∞.
o The Alpha-beta pruning to a standard minimax algorithm returns the same move as the standard
algorithm does, but it removes all the nodes which are not really affecting the final decision but
making algorithm slow. Hence by pruning these nodes, it makes the algorithm fast.

Note: To better understand this topic, kindly study the minimax algorithm.

Condition for Alpha-beta pruning:

The main condition which required for alpha-beta pruning is:

1. α>=β

Key points about alpha-beta pruning:

o The Max player will only update the value of alpha.

o The Min player will only update the value of beta.
o While backtracking the tree, the node values will be passed to upper nodes instead of values of
alpha and beta.
o We will only pass the alpha, beta values to the child nodes.

Working of Alpha-Beta Pruning:

Let's take an example of two-player search tree to understand the working of
Alpha-beta pruning

Step 1: At the first step the, Max player will start first move from node A
where α= -∞ and β= +∞, these value of alpha and beta passed down to
node B where again α= -∞ and β= +∞, and Node B passes the same value to
its child D.
Step 2: At Node D, the value of α will be calculated as its turn for Max. The
value of α is compared with firstly 2 and then 3, and the max (2, 3) = 3 will
be the value of α at node D and node value will also 3.

Step 3: Now algorithm backtrack to node B, where the value of β will

change as this is a turn of Min, Now β= +∞, will compare with the available
subsequent nodes value, i.e. min (∞, 3) = 3, hence at node B now α= -∞, and
β= 3.
In the next step, algorithm traverse the next successor of Node B which is
node E, and the values of α= -∞, and β= 3 will also be passed.

Step 4: At node E, Max will take its turn, and the value of alpha will change.
The current value of alpha will be compared with 5, so max (-∞, 5) = 5,
hence at node E α= 5 and β= 3, where α>=β, so the right successor of E will
be pruned, and algorithm will not traverse it, and the value at node E will be
5.
Step 5: At next step, algorithm again backtrack the tree, from node B to
node A. At node A, the value of alpha will be changed the maximum
available value is 3 as max (-∞, 3)= 3, and β= +∞, these two values now
passes to right successor of A which is Node C.

At node C, α=3 and β= +∞, and the same values will be passed on to node
F.

Step 6: At node F, again the value of α will be compared with left child
which is 0, and max(3,0)= 3, and then compared with right child which is 1,
and max(3,1)= 3 still α remains 3, but the node value of F will become 1.
Step 7: Node F returns the node value 1 to node C, at C α= 3 and β= +∞,
here the value of beta will be changed, it will compare with 1 so min (∞, 1) =
1. Now at C, α=3 and β= 1, and again it satisfies the condition α>=β, so the
next child of C which is G will be pruned, and the algorithm will not compute
the entire sub-tree G.
Step 8: C now returns the value of 1 to A here the best value for A is max (3,
1) = 3. Following is the final game tree which is the showing the nodes which
are computed and nodes which has never computed. Hence the optimal
value for the maximizer is 3 for this example.
Move Ordering in Alpha-Beta pruning:
The effectiveness of alpha-beta pruning is highly dependent on the order in
which each node is examined. Move order is an important aspect of alpha-
beta pruning.

It can be of two types:

o Worst ordering: In some cases, alpha-beta pruning algorithm does not prune any of the leaves of
the tree, and works exactly as minimax algorithm. In this case, it also consumes more time because
of alpha-beta factors, such a move of pruning is called worst ordering. In this case, the best move
occurs on the right side of the tree. The time complexity for such an order is O(b m).
o Ideal ordering: The ideal ordering for alpha-beta pruning occurs when lots of pruning happens in
the tree, and best moves occur at the left side of the tree. We apply DFS hence it first search left of
the tree and go deep twice as minimax algorithm in the same amount of time. Complexity in ideal
ordering is O(bm/2).

Rules to find good ordering:

Following are some rules to find good ordering in alpha-beta pruning:

o Occur the best move from the shallowest node.

o Order the nodes in the tree such that the best nodes are checked first.
o Use domain knowledge while finding the best move. Ex: for Chess, try order: captures first, then
threats, then forward moves, backward moves.
o We can bookkeep the states, as there is a possibility that states may repeat.