AI Taught How To Play Ms. Pac-Man

trogador writes with the news that researchers are working to teach AIs how to play games as an exercise in reinforced learning. Software constructs have been taught to play games like chess and checkers since the 50s, but the Department of Information Systems at Eotvos University in Hungary is working to adapt that thinking to more modern titles. Besides Ms. Pac-Man, game like Tetris and Baldur's Gate assist these programs in mapping different behaviors onto their artificial test subjects. "Szita and Lorincz chose Ms. Pac-Man for their study because the game enabled them to test a variety of teaching methods. In the original Pac-Man, released in 1979, players must eat dots, avoid being eaten by four ghosts, and score big points by eating flashing ghosts. Therefore, a player's movements depend heavily on the movements of ghosts. However, the ghosts' routes are deterministic, enabling players to find patterns and predict future movements. In Ms. Pac-Man, on the other hand, the ghosts' routes are randomized, so that players can't figure out an optimal action sequence in advance."

Comments

Re:"AI"s tend to be overhyped

[Chess_the_cat]

Exactly. This is the sort of thing AI researchers tout in order to maintain funding. For 60 years AI scientists have failed at creating anything close to intelligence so they trot out the micro-world or the game solver and claim they're progressing. They're not. Read What Computers Still Can't Do by Dreyfus. Great stuff and pretty much blows the lid off claims like the one found in this submission's headline.