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New AI Challenge Is All About Wanton Destruction
togelius writes "Previous years have seen a number of car racing competitions where neural nets, rule-based systems and other fancy AI techniques have been put to the test by letting them drive on a track and seeing who gets the best lap time. Recognizing that finding the Michael Schumacher of AI is not enough, a team of researchers from University of Wuerzburg now wants to find the Mad Max of AI. Their new competition is called 'Demolition Derby' and the goal is to 'wreck all opponent cars by crashing into them without getting wrecked yourself.' For this, they use the open-source TORCS game and a custom AI interface, allowing all and any AI researchers and enthusiasts (including you!) to submit their best and most aggressive controllers." (There's a competition for conventional racing, too; competitors can enter either or both.)
With real vehicles!
Gotta develop the appropriate durability if they're gonna be dealing with whatever I.E.D.s that the People of the Resistance will be able to use.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I think it would be more interesting if they kept it closer to actual demo derbies but maybe they're just taking it one step at a time.
Things like... there's no teams but they can still communicate and decide to take out a competitor who's doing better than them or they trick others into doing the damage by pushing cars in the way instead of trying to smash 'em on their own.