A team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new computer system that is capable of understanding human language by simply reading a game’s manual.

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab developed the system, which learned to play popular online strategy game Civilization by reading the game’s manual, without human supervision.

The system is based on a script developed by Researcher Regina Barzilay that allows a computer to install software on a Windows system using the instructions provided by a Microsoft website. Anotehr researcher, S. R. K. Branavan, who is part of the team that developed the system, said that the manual provided instructions to the computer.

The manual did not provide instructions on how to win. The system did not have any information about the game before hand and learns to play gradually like humans. The system learns by reading the manual an experimenting with the controls.

“Games are used as a test bed for artificial-intelligence techniques simply because of their complexity,” Branavan said.

“Every action that you take in the game doesn’t have a predetermined outcome, because the game or the opponent can randomly react to what you do. So you need a technique that can handle very complex scenarios that react in potentially random ways.”