I think the AI would have to know the machine rules. There is a video where this was done with super mario bros. The AI would learn to progress by not dying. It knew what death looked like in memory is my guess. When it encountered the death state it would remember where and when it happened as well as what it was doing when it happened. Example: walk right on level 1-1 until mario hits the goomba. Next time it'll try jumping on/over that obstacle until it clears it. Same thing with a pit. First time it'll jump 1 tile width. If that does not work next time jump 2 tile widths, etc. If it gets past the goomba it'll do this trial and error process over and over each time it dies until it finally reaches the game over state where it has actually won the game. I'd think the pin AI would do something similar using a camera so it knows where to hit each shot. Imagine if you never missed a shot once you learned where to flip as the ball rolls down the flipper. It'd be interesting to see how it handles multiball. This is all conjecture of course. I don't know how the pin AI actually works. Just basing it off what I read about AI on game emulation. Very interesting.

If the AI does not know the rules it'd try to keep the ball in play and learn what shots will allow it to do that. Once it learns that it can hit the left ramp on phantom of the opera which returns to the right flipper it'll just do that over and over because it knows it won't drain.