Game Designers Test the Limits of Artificial
Intelligence
Boston Globe (06/17/07) Kirsner, Scott
Bruce Blumberg, senior scientist at Blue Fang Games in Waltham, Mass., and
former professor at MIT's Media Lab, says game developers are doing some of
the most interesting work in artificial intelligence. "You have really
bright kids who are dealing with problems they don't realize are insoluble.
They're very motivated," Blumberg says. Today's video game developers are
working to create more intelligent and realistic characters by mimicking
human intelligence. Meanwhile, online sites such as Second Life and
"massively multiplayer games" such as World of Warcraft have created
incredibly intelligent characters because they are controlled by other
humans. Players in these games create their own character, and then spend
the majority of their time interacting with other peoples' characters. "In
some ways, all of these massively multiplayer games have shone a light on
the deficiencies of artificially intelligent characters in games to this
point," says Blue Fang CEO Hank Howie. One possible approach that could
create more human-like artificial intelligence is to have humans "train"
the AI software, which is what MIT Media Lab grad student Jeff Orkin is
doing. Orkin has developed The Restaurant Game, which has players assume
the role of a restaurant's wait staff. Orkin's objective is to capture
their behavior and dialog to build more realistic software-driven
characters, much like motion capture cameras are used to record and
replicate human movement. "Ideally, AI systems in the future will observe
as designers directly control characters, and learn to play roles and even
converse," Orkin says.
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