Electric Dreams: The Lost Future of A.I.

[J T]

Michael Cook is writing a multi part series on Rock, Paper, Shotgun about artificial intelligence. The first piece is out now:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02 ... ore-270717

This should be really interesting stuff. For those who don't know him, Michael Cook is an academic A.I. researcher who developed Angelina, an A.I. that can make its own video games and has even entered a Ludum Dare competition.

I thought this could also be a good thread for general discussion about interesting examples of video game A.I.

[tomspy77]

Funny...great link but I thought this was maybe referring to the 80's comedy film of the same name...which is both dated and quite fun if you are into the early days of home computing and can take a large grain of salt abut what a PC was able to do back then lol.



Edit: My god, that trailer is crap lol...

[Pulsar_t]

Games are not on the forefront of AI development any longer, which is a weird dichotomy since we are witnessing AI taking over our lives in reality, but taking a back seat in game development. One more field where life is becoming weirder.

[Forlorn Drifter]

AI scares me, and I'm not a huge fan of it.

[GSZX1337]

I read this a few days ago, and this jumped straight at me:

Bungie noticed that if you simply doubled the health of an enemy, playtesters would report that they seemed more intelligent.

This both makes me feel sad and vindicated. I'm sad that according to this having the double health smokescreen does trick people into thinking the enemies are more challenging. While I love Half-Life, Quake, and the like, the higher difficulties are a puss-filled zit on the genre's ass. I always thought that Halo's AI wasn't that great, hence why I also feel vindicated.

[Pulsar_t]

AI scares me, and I'm not a huge fan of it.

Go to youtube and look up Dr. Hugo de Garis.

[Gunstar Green]

I remember the first time I played the Half-Life: Uplink demo and faced FPS enemies that actually took cover and tried to flank you instead of run straight at you shooting like robots from Berzerk. It's an experience that stuck with me over the years even though it's pretty basic today.

[J T]

I read this a few days ago, and this jumped straight at me:

Bungie noticed that if you simply doubled the health of an enemy, playtesters would report that they seemed more intelligent.

This both makes me feel sad and vindicated. I'm sad that according to this having the double health smokescreen does trick people into thinking the enemies are more challenging. While I love Half-Life, Quake, and the like, the higher difficulties are a puss-filled zit on the genre's ass. I always thought that Halo's AI wasn't that great, hence why I also feel vindicated.

This statement stuck out to me too. However, I think that the conclusion drawn might be incorrect. I don't know if this finding actually indicates that players are poor judges of intelligence. I think it might simply mean that their enemies were killed so quickly that there wasn't enough time for the artificial intelligence to be demonstrated.

It is an interesting question though if players can actually recognize higher levels of AI. On basic levels, such as the difference of a flying enemy having a fixed pattern vs a homing ability, it is easy to tell that the homing AI is smarter. When we get to the level of AI bots in an FPS strategically flanking and using cover vs. running and gunning towards the player, it is a little more difficult to recognize the intelligence difference. As AI gets even smarter than that, only intelligent players will recognize the intelligence of the AI.

Also, if an AI is smarter than you, then the game isn't fun because you can't figure out how to win. Unless the AI can actually make you smarter. More often than not though, players find a weakness in the AI and exploit it. That's also not particularly fun. Videogame AI needs to be programmed with built in faults and chance probability for errors. It also needs to learn how to recognize and alter strategies when it is being exploited by players.

[Forlorn Drifter]

AI scares me, and I'm not a huge fan of it.

Go to youtube and look up Dr. Hugo de Garis.

As soon as I saw one of his videos say "...and Jewish Deviance" I backed out.

I was half joking anyways. AI in games isn't something I've ever put that much though into, but its interesting. I think of conversations in games like Mass Effect, and wonder how things might play if the AI took into consideration the relationship with the player, a base "personality" and world views, etc, and answered questions accordingly, rather than just scripted good of bad. Say for example you were good friends with Wrex, and said something mean or some such, and he took it as a friendly jab and replied likewise. If you weren't friends, he might try to kill you. Stuff like that interests me.

[J T]

I think the concept of the A.I. Director that was used in the Left 4 Dead games is really interesting. Basically, the A.I. is studying how the player is playing the game, and then adapting to their play-style to provide a maximally scary/intense/fun experience. I'd like to see more director A.I.s in the future, though I know Valve has been experimenting with tactics for the A.I. to measure the players emotional response and to incorporate that feedback into its directorial decisions. This is cool for games, but a scary idea in general of having A.I.'s that can read us emotionally and adapt their approach to human interactions.

Nevertheless, I like the idea of procedural generation algorithms that use player emotional reactivity codified into information variables for shaping level design.