Games

Science Lesson - Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) Real?

'Have you ever encountered a situation where it really felt like the computer-controlled opponents were really thinking?'

By Filip Truta, Games Editor

2nd of April 2007, 10:20 GMT

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Who says that scientists don't have fun?

Many of you probably asked this question and maybe still do. Slashdod posts this rather small but interesting article debating whether or not gamers notice any intelligent activity on behalf of the computer, during gameplay. Also, I found the most relevant question I've ever heard in connection to AI: "Have you ever encountered a situation where it really felt like the computer-controlled opponents were really thinking?" Well, have you?

You probably did but moments later you said, "naa it's all in my mind, the game's getting to me that's

all," or, "does this s**t really have AI? 'cause I think I just saw that guy evade attacks in a pretty smart way" and then you go to your friends and tell all about it, details and everything. But there is a greater importance of the AI in video games that you might have not known about. It helps develop even more artificial intelligence with every other AI using game released.

Research (PhD) student at the Department of Computer Science University of Essex, Julian Togelius deals with this sort of thing: "I have this idea that computer games are ideal environments in which to develop general intelligence. The main reason is that a well-crafted game (and don't forget that hundreds of man-years go into the development of many commercial games) is a smooth learning task, that starts with relatively modest demands on the player, but in the course of the game requires more and more complex cognitive skills. Moreover, games, with all their sophisticated graphics, provide ample high-dimensional input data for the agent's sensors, something which I think is very important and often overlooked in commonly used robot simulators."

The agents may vary from any known in-game enemy, as you can imagine. With video games, (such as Halo or STALKER) researchers create the perfect environments to stimulate the AI. Thus, they're not given dozens of strict commands anymore (yeah sure that too), but a main one that says "Adapt!" So, I guess this answers our question. Yes, AI is as real as the air we're breathing and not only is it at a pretty evolved stage nowadays, but it's evolving. Rapidly. Some scientists have dreams that one day they'll make up the entire human brain artificially. Imagine something like that implemented into video-games.

TAGS:

AI | Julian Togelius | Halo | STALKER

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