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Computers, Games and the Real World. By Matthew L. Ginsberg. Scientific American (special issue: Exploring Intelligence - Winter 1998). "More than just competing with people, game-playing machines complement human thinking by offering alternative methods to solving problems."
Why Research Games?
Q: Given all the important and practical applications of artificial intelligence, why do researchers spend time on games?
A: Games provide focused challenges for artificial intelligence, just as they do for human players. Playing games lets us tune particular skills and test different kinds of intelligence while having fun. These benefits carry over to AI research: Games give AI researchers a way of exploring different aspects of intelligence in-depth. They have a well-defined structure that can allow for clear measurement of progress. Pitting computers against humans lets us push AI and can show us surprising things about human intelligence. International competitions create a testing ground with variety and scope far greater than isolated testing.
Where's the Fun in Losing?
Q: Doesn't creating a super-player ruin the game for humans?
A: No more than the existence of experts hurts regular players! People play games for the personal challenge, enjoyment, and their interest is not harmed by the fact that somewhere out there a bot could beat them. Even finding the perfect solution to a game like Checkers doesn't stop people from having fun.
Why Have Human-vs-Computer Competitions?
Q: What do you hope to accomplish through Human-Computer competitions such as the Man-Machine Poker Match or Kasparov vs Deep Blue chess tournament?
A: Computers are getting more powerful and their algorithms are getting more sophisticated. Games researchers have been pioneering new techniques to address many different challenges within games that are important in real-life decision making. How far have these techniques come along? Many games currently being studied for AI have a long history. The top players have devoted years of their life to playing and studying the game. Have we reached the point where computers can play these games, and deal with their particular challenges, better than the best humans which have had years of experience and benefit from decades of collective human expertise? This is what we hope to answer.
Human-vs-computer events can motivate the research. Competition is great for driving progress. Having a goal of defeating the world's best human players forces our research group to continue to innovate, pioneer new ideas, and perfect old ones.
In addition, having machines win against their human counterparts is a milestone. It demonstrates how far the technology has progressed and helps establish in what sorts of problems do computers excel, and where does more work need to be done.
-Michael Bowling
FAQs on Particular Games
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