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IEEE Spectrum Surveys Current Games' AI Technology
orac2 writes " IEEE Spectrum has an article on the AI technologies used in the current crop of video games. State machines, learning algorithms, cheating, smart terrain, etc are discussed. Game developers interviewed include Richard Evans, of Black and White fame, who talks about Lionhead's upcoming Dmitri project and Soren Johnson who created Civ III's AI."
Given that this is the IEEE, it was somewhat disappointing to read the following.
Fortunately, most graphics processing had by then moved onto dedicated graphics cards, and CPU resources and memory--already increasing dramatically, thanks to Moore's law--were being freed up for computationally intensive and hitherto impractical tasks, such as better AI.
They make Moore's Law sound as if it is something more than just an observation.
places limitations on algebraic systems. One of the things that it does *not* do is place limits on understanding because it imposes no limits on * the number of algebraic systems* you can devise.
If a theorem cannot be expressed in one system you simply make another where it can.
One of the fascinating things about the human mind is its ability to go *beyond* single logical structures and fully understand an infinite number of incompatible algebras.
The problem with developing AI isn't so much that we don't understand the human mind, it's that we *do* understand it to be something well beyond a simple algebraic computer, which at the moment is all computers are. They are *computational* devices with a preprogramed logic. *That* logic is subject to Godel.
Your computer is a giant abacus. Nothing more, nothing less. This says nothing about the possibilities of developing machines that are *not* simply a bank of bistable switches.
Nor is there any axiom which states that intelligence must be *human* in form.
That last point is outrageously important to all sorts of fields.
KFG
AI is a euphemism for "behavior." When I hear people complaining about how games aren't using the latest in AI research, I want to respond "that's because games don't really use AI" at least not what people think of as AI. AI in a typical game is just a list of weighted rules, such as "if the player has a more powerful weapon than character X, make character X run away." When you have lots of such rules and you twiddle with them a lot, then you get so-called AI.
Putting in random factors makes things much harder to pin down. Maybe when a character spots you, there will be a 50% "run or attack" decision. If the decision to run, then you think "Ha, ha, ha, he's running scared!" If the decision is to attack, and he gets you, then you think "Wow, that guy was good." If he attacks and you get him, then you feel like you're doing well.
To a great extent AI is psychological. You read into things what you want.
Some time after getting Unreal Tournament 2003, I set out to appraise its AI. I decided to set up a game in which it couldn't cheat; I made a one-on-one game, on the map DM-Gael (a small, open map, so while the bot may always know the player's location, also vise versa), and with rocket launchers only (so that the bot couldn't do some simple trig to always hit). I set the bot to its highest difficulty, and played.
The bot had some notable weaknesses (it kept getting killed going for the powerup in the center, or while coming up a lift, and never seemed to learn from these mistakes), but did fairly well overall. In the end I won with a substantial, but not overwhelming, margin.
So, I said, the AI had failed the test: given a fair match, on its most difficult settings, it lost. But then I realized, I had a lot of fun administering it. Then I realized that the point of an AI isn't to beat the player, but to be fun to play against; whether it wins or loses really doesn't matter.
No an AI will not be considered alive until it can successfully judge a turing test
I never understand requirements like this; you're putting the mark way higher than you do for humans, or other life forms.
People (who knew nothing about AI) have been fooled in Turing tests by the likes of Eliza. And you're saying those people aren't even alive?
If you assume all adult humans are intelligent and alive, you can't make a test for intelligence that excludes some adult humans.
Note that the Turing test is a sufficient, but not necessary test for intelligence, as proposed by Turing. That means that he would consider a computer that passed it certainly intelligent, but it does not mean that "an AI will not be considered alive until it can pass a Turing test" - it may be considered intelligent for other reasons.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.