# What form of output would be needed to train a model on a connect 4 AI?

I've had a big interest in machine learning for a while, and I've followed along a few tutorials, but have never made my own project. After losing many games of connect 4 with my friends, I decided to try to make a replica of that, then create a neural network and AI to play against me (Or at least something where I can enter the current board scenario, and it will output which row is the best move). This may be an ambitious first project, but I'm willing to put in the work and research to create something I'm proud of. I created the game using p5.js, and though it may be simple, I'm really happy with how it turned out, as it's one of my first more interesting and unique projects in computer science. Now I don't know a ton about ML, so bear with me. I would like the use pytorch, but I'm open to tensorflow/keras as well.

Here are a few of my questions:

1. What output do I need to train? My game currently doesn't have a win condition. Would an array or matrix filled with a 0 where there isn't a chip, a 1 where a red chip is, and a 2 for a yellow? Ie
[0,0,0,0
1,0,0,0
1,0,0,0
1,0,2,0
1,2,2,2]


and enter a 1 somewhere to signify this as a win for player 1? Could an AI recognize this 4 in a row pattern as what needs to be done to win?

1. What is the best way to simulate a lot of games to get my training data? I'm imagining using an RNG to drop chips randomly, export the data output to a file and then enter whether it was a win for p1, p2, or a tie?