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Video Games, Toys, Robotic Pets & EntertainmentAdding AI to Our Entertainment AITopics > Applications / Expert Systems | Games & Puzzles > AI Applications Areas > Video Games, Toys, Robotic Pets & Entertainment  "What's more striking about the latest generation is the appearance of unscripted, emergent behavior - the AI stumbling on new ways of responding to the world, strategies and behaviors that weren't deliberately planned by the designers."
- Steven Johnson
Introductory ReadingsHead over heels for tomorrow's personal robots - "Our future appears to be full of empathetic, human-like, companion robots at relatively low prices. By Daniel Terdiman. CNET News.com (January 11, 2008). The recent launch of Pleo, a dinosaur 'life form' from Emeryville, Calif.-based Ugobe is one of the more high-profile releases of a companion robot to date. And its $350 price may be just low enough to lure a mainstream audience. But this is just the beginning. In fact, suggests a group of industry insiders, Pleo is likely to be a jumping-off point for ubiquitous, inexpensive robots with capabilities far beyond what is possible today, including offering people a level of empathetic companionship that has so far been strictly the province of science fiction. ... 'Pretty soon, they're not going to be called "toys" anymore, or they'll redefine what "toys" mean,' said David Hanson, the founder and chief scientist of Hanson Robotics. His Richardson, Texas-based company specializes in what it calls 'conversation character robots,' and its Zeno robot-boy can recognize, understand, and respond to human facial features. 'These devices are changing toys into a much more flexible information-processing medium…a revolutionary character medium (that is) becoming increasingly aware of humans,' Hanson said. Personal robotics is a wide-open field, and one that ABI Research analyst Philip Solis recently estimated will be worth $15 billion annually by 2015." Going Gunning With My Imaginary Friends. Commentary by Clive Thompson. Wired (February 25, 2008). "Can a machine think? That's the question that mathematician Alan Turing posed in 1950, when he posited his famous Turing Test. He argued that artificial intelligence could be thought of as intelligent if it passes a social test -- if it can fool a human into believing it's real. Alas, critics agree that no machine has passed the Turing Test. We're never fooled by chatbots for very long, as the annual Loebner Prize contest proves. The thing is, we humans are awfully good at decoding social cues and detecting humanness; we can instantly tell when a preprogrammed 'conversation tree' is repeating itself. That's why many philosophers say machines will never pass the Turing Test. Except, of course, for videogames. They're filled with AI characters -- enemies we confront, and teammates we play alongside. And the truth is, we often develop complex emotional and social relationships with AI characters inside games. ... And here's the weird thing: In games, we know they're machines. We know our companions aren't human. But we don't care -- we still wind up treating them in oddly human ways. Videogames, in effect, are beyond Turing. As Simon Bart, a sociologist who studies videogames at Concordia University in Montreal, put it in a recent paper: 'The solo game is posthumanistically social.' It's about the pleasures of hanging out with machines even when you're aware they're merely machines." Digital animals rule toy fair. Reuters via Scientific American Video News (Februay 20, 2008). "A life-like golden retriever that responds to touch and your command was one of the highlights at this year's American International Toy Fair." Redefining the Power of the Gamer - The first Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference explored a future where games are driven as strongly by characters as combat. By Seth Schiesel. The New York Times (June 7, 2005; subscription req'd.). "Standing outside the apartment on Thursday, Walter could hear the barbs and retorts of a failed marriage's final throes. Walter's friends, Grace and Trip, had invited him over. ... This is the future of video games. In their modern riff on 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' Walter was the only human. Grace and Trip were virtual characters powered by advanced artificial intelligence techniques, which allowed them to change their emotional state in fairly complicated ways in response to the conversational English being typed in by the human player. It was one version of the future here this past week at the first Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference. It is a future where games are driven as strongly by characters as combat, where games are as much soap opera as shooting gallery and as much free-form construction set as destruction arena. The apartment drama, a 15-minute interactive story called 'Facade' that is scheduled to be released free next month (interactivestory.net), was one of the demonstrations offered to the roughly 120 game makers and academic computer experts who attended. 'As we try to create more immersive experiences, these artificial intelligence techniques are helping drive games forward and this is one of the areas that could really explode,' Bing Gordon, chief creative officer at Electronic Arts, the No. 1 video game company, said after his talk Wednesday night. 'We hope that the folks here start thinking about artificial intelligence as a feature, like graphics is a feature or sound is a feature.'" [Go here for more info about the conference.]  AI is A-OK in new games. By Mike Snider. USATODAY.com (September 24, 2007). "Our video-game enemies are smart -- and getting smarter. The artificial intelligence that guides in-game characters today leads to far more natural actions and realistic friends and foes than in the past. 'As graphics improvements top out, artificial intelligence will (drive) game innovation,' says University of California-Santa Cruz professor Michael Mateas. A look at AI evolution: ...." It's Alive! Say hello to Pleo. From the guy who brought you Furby, it's a snuffling, stretching, oddly convincing robotic dinosaur. You are so going to want one. By Clive Thompson. Wired (January 2007; Issue 15.01). "[Caleb] Chung knows how to create emotional connections to toys. Ten years ago, the bushy-haired, hyperkinetic inventor conceived Furby, selling more than 40 million of the yammering gremlins in a worldwide craze that launched the now-booming industry of robotic pets. A string of artificial companions have since trundled off the production line: the FurReal cat, the Roboraptor, the Robosapien, the Aibo and its litter of me-too electronic pooches. Household robots have arrived – not as servants doing our laundry but as helpless, babylike things that demand we take care of them. Still, all of them have acted like, well, robots. But Chung, now 50, has a different idea: He wants to create 'an artificial life-form'– something that looks eerily alive and is affected by its environment. Pleo begins as a baby, and its personality is forged by how you treat it. ... The idea of making empathetic machines raises eyebrows, even among some roboticists. Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor and the author of several works on technology and identity, asks, 'Should we be creating robots just to make people feel good? Should we be making artificial companions? Isn't this a statement that we've given up on offering actual human companions?'" The hard-thought race for intelligent gaming - Artificial intelligence is the holy grail for game designers, but just how smart are current methods and what's in the pipeline? By Alexander Gambotto-Burke. The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited (April 19, 2007). "While visual fidelity has advanced exponentially over time, the technology that governs how games play, react and adapt - the artificial intelligence, or AI - remains relatively rudimentary. A handful of developers are striving to change this. ..." The Hard Science of Making Videogames - Behind every realistic explosion, racecar and Jedi are programmers solving some of the toughest problems in physics, psychology and math. By Jacob Ward, Doug Cantor and Bjorn Carey. Popular Science (September 2007).
Exclusive interview with Peter Molyneux. New Scientist Video (May 2007). "New Scientist interviews legendary game developer Peter Molyneux on why computer games must get emotional, and how Fable 2 will make you feel loved." Brian Reynolds On "How AI Enables Designers'' - GDCRadio podcast of this lecture from the 2004 Game Developers Conference. [The transcript is available from Gamasutra.] "I am going to talk about some of the specific different categories of AI. The different kinds of things one can use AI to do, and how they relate to the design process - how they can enhance the design process if they are developed side by side with the design. Then I am going to try to use as much of the time as possible to talk about some case studies of this process at work, and games that I have worked on over the years, and finally I'll end with the classic do's and don'ts AI techniques for designers." AI - the smart way to go. By Paul Hyman. HollywoodReporter.com (August 26, 2005). "Artificial intelligence -- or 'AI' -- is the Rodney Dangerfield of video game design. It gets no respect when it's working great, as when it contributed to 'Halo 2' and 'Half-Life 2' becoming the hugely successful games that they are. But when game characters start walking into walls, everyone knows to blame the AI. According to John Funge, high-quality graphics may be what attracts a player to a game, but it's the AI and the gameplay that holds their attention. ... In a chat with Hollywood Reporter columnist Paul Hyman, Funge talks about why designers ought to think about AI when turning their IP into games, and how AI has the potential to become the new driving force behind video game innovation. ... THR: When people talk about the next generation of console games, they always have a laundry list of what's going to make them better than today's games: more intense graphics, better sound and music, more realistic action. But you don't hear much about AI. Is that because no one expects AI to improve in next-gen games? Funge: No, that's not true at all. It's just that, for whatever reason, AI hasn't really captured the public's imagination to the same extent as graphics. Partly because it's a harder thing to appreciate. The graphics are very obvious to the player. Interestingly enough, that is changing. Nowadays, it's difficult to see the difference between this year's game graphics and last year's, so you're getting into an area of diminishing returns. Which is why I think AI will start to become more and more important as a way to differentiate games." Wild Things -They fight. They flock. They have free will. Get ready for game bots with a mind of their own. By Steven Johnson. Wired (March 2002/10.03). "It is the year 2002. After an explosion of R&D funded by software giants and startups, more than a third of US households are populated by sophisticated artificial intelligence bots - their decisionmaking guided by complex neural nets and simulated emotions, their perceptual systems honed to detect subtle changes in their environment. Every day millions of Americans interact with these creatures, encountering advanced technology from nuanced natural language routines to gesture recognition to machine learning. Perhaps most impressive: As the AIs have grown smarter, they have begun to communicate among themselves, sharing new ideas and collaborating on group tasks. This is not some hopelessly optimistic sci-fi scenario from 20 years ago. It is reality. Consumer-grade artificial intelligence is alive and well in the world of games. ... What's more striking about the latest generation is the appearance of unscripted, emergent behavior - the AI stumbling on new ways of responding to the world, strategies and behaviors that weren't deliberately planned by the designers." The Video Game Revolution. KCTS Television & PBS. "From Fad to Phenomenon This is the story of how a whimsical invention of the 1960s helped spawn the computer industry as we know it. Video games have influenced the way children live and play, forever altered the entertainment industry, and even affected the way wars are fought. See how it all began and find out what it means for the future. The Video Game Revolution premieres Wednesday, Sept. 8th, [2004] at 9:00 p.m."
See what's happening at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center including:
AI for Your PC - New games Fable and the Sims 2 further the cause of agent-based play. By David Kushner. Popular Science (March 2004). "Peek behind the graphics of two new games and you'll find the same artificial intelligence that's at work in Pentagon-sponsored war simulations." Video games without frontiers. By Mark Ward. BBC (January 31, 2003). "Keen gamers can rejoice as US scientists are working on ways to make computer games that never end. The researchers are adapting AI techniques used for robot navigation to manage game worlds that constantly present fresh challenges to players. Games created using these techniques will be less like scenes from a film and more like a reactive and interactive world that players can explore almost endlessly. Already the researchers have created several virtual environments overseen by their story management system. ... Many settle for a linear storyline that forces players to plod through it step by step. R Michael Young, head of the Liquid Narrative Group at North Carolina State University, said this was because of the way many computer games are written. Typically, he said, games creators write computer code for every event, action and object in the game to pre-script what is going to happen. 'As a result,' he said, 'there are a reasonably small number of paths through the story space.' ... Professor Young said his group steps back from the scene-scripting approach and instead creates an over-arching system that develops the story around the player's actions." 
Emotionware. Lynellen D.S. Perry. ACM Crossroads Student Magazine. (1996) "Expressing emotion to convey the thought process of the agent 'helps us know that characters really care about what happens in the world, that they truly have desires. In contrast, the fighting characters of current video games show almost no reaction to the tremendous violence that engulfs them.'" Stepford Child. By Sonia Zjawinski. Wired (August 2002). "Even though she's just 5 years old, Cindy Smart speaks five languages. She's a good reader. She can tell time and do simple math, including multiplication and division. She's not a prodigy. She's just good programming. Cindy looks like an average doll - 18? inches of blond hair, baby-blue eyes, and a button nose. But loaded with a digital camera, microprocessor, and voice recognition software, Cindy is the first doll that can see, think, and do as she's told. That makes her both surprisingly precocious ... and a little creepy. When introduced by Toy Quest at conventions around the nation earlier this year, the doll spooked viewers as she read and counted out loud." "The ROBOTA dolls are a family of mini humanoid robots. They are educational toys. They can engage in complex interaction with humans, involving speech, vision and body imitation." From the Small Humanoid section of the University of Southern California Humanoid Robotics site.
 If you kick a robotic dog, is it wrong? By G. Jeffrey MacDonald. The Christian Science Monitor (February 5, 2004). "How should people treat creatures that seem ever more emotional with each step forward in robotic technology, but who really have no feelings? ... If Aibo did have true emotions and self-awareness, philosophers generally agree, then it would require humane treatment. But as machines, robotic pets with sad eyes can nevertheless be legitimately neglected, a fact that some people find troubling, while others welcome both in its practicality and moral significance." Also see the two articles, Robots get friendly and Looking technology in the eye. General ReadingsArtificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment. Papers from the 2002 AAAI Spring Symposia include Damian Isla and Bruce Blumberg's New Challenges for Character-Based AI for Games.
Proceedings of the Symposium on Robotics, Mechatronics and Animatronics in the Creative and Entertainment Industries and Arts. AISB 2005. One of the many convention proceedings available from The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (SSAISB). Tribes - Vengeance Designer Diary. Irrational hopes to make your enemies seem smarter than the average bear. By Marc Atkin. IGN.com (December 3, 2003). "Artificial Intelligence (AI) - the art of making computer controlled characters look smart. In games, though, the goal isn't so much to give them human-like intelligence (which is one of the Holy Grails of computer science research and is what mad scientists are currently working on in their labs around the world), but to make them entertaining to play with and against (which is still 'difficult', but certainly more doable). ... Before I joined Irrational, I actually used to be one of those aforementioned mad scientists, and I'm intrigued by the idea that it might be possible to bring some of the state of the art AI techniques currently being worked on in research labs to our game. ... So why aren't AI's smarter? Well, there's the obvious reason that it takes lot of effort to write good AI. There's also the issue that even a reasonably sophisticated AI takes a lot of CPU time - CPU time that is often desperately needed by the graphics engine, for example. But a more fundamental reason is that when you try to add all the special cases and events to the AI that you would like it to react to intelligently, the code gets very complicated very fast. ... I don't believe it has to be this way, though, and I spent the first part of the project designing and implementing a general AI engine that makes it easier to set up a lot of different behaviors for an AI. One of its central features is that it allows our designers to tell an AI not to do just one thing, but a large number of things." Game Intelligence AI Plays Along. By Tracy Baker. Computer Power User. Volume 2, Issue 1 (January 2002): pages 56-60 in print issue. "While most games use a combination of several AI techniques, designers rely on some techniques more than others. Scripted AI, also called rules-based AI, is by far the most common AI found in games today. ... The other nice thing about games that use scripting is that most incorporate extensible AI that lets players directly edit the game's behavior. ... ALife (Artificial life) techniques are used to create AI that is based on real-world behavior instead of a list of rules." Robot Dog 'Bugs' Inventor. By Jeffrey Benner. Wired News (November 2, 2001). "A mechanical bug toy is fighting a robotic dog for more than just space under the Christmas tree this year. The two toys represent rival schools of thought vying for supremacy in the quest for artificial intelligence. ... Enter the upstart B.I.O. Mechanical Bugs from Hasbro ... Despite the rivalry between traditional and behavior-based robots, experts agree that, ultimately, the robots of the future will be a combination of the concepts underlying the B.I.O. bugs and the Aibo." Four Cool Ways to Use Neural Networks in Games. By David M. Bourg and Glenn Seeman. ONLamp.com (September 30, 2004). "For games, neural networks offer some key advantages over more traditional AI techniques. First, using a neural network may allow game developers to simplify the coding of complex state machines or rules-based systems by relegating key decision-making processes to one or more trained neural networks. Second, neural networks offer the potential for the game's AI to adapt as the game is played. This is a rather intriguing possibility and is a very popular subject in the game AI community at this time."
Beyond The Bits: Artificial Intelligence Part #1. By Jeff Cork. Game Informer Online (May 7, 2007). "Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is one of the most important yet least understood aspects of modern game development. Depending on the type of game, developers may have entirely different goals when it comes to telling the computer how to play the game. Some say mimicking human intelligence is the goal. Others take a more pragmatic approach and say simply having the computer avoid doing too many stupid things is a solid benchmark.While it’s not necessarily easy to define what makes 'good' AI, the effects of less-than-optimal AI are hard to ignore. ... Obviously, much has changed since the early days of game development. 'Over the last 20 years AI has gone from being a trivial few lines of code to a major part of games,' says Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios. Molyneux is no stranger to the field, having worked on such AI-heavy projects as Populous, Theme Park and Black & White. ... Before we proceed, it should be noted that AI is split into multiple camps, and for the sake of simplicity, we’ll divide them into academic, or theoretical, AI and gaming AI. ... Diferent Games, Different Challenges: Fighters ... Action ... First-Person Shooters ... Puzzle Games ... MMORPGS ... Racing ... "
Talking Up a Good Game - Computer Simulation to Stimulate Soldiers to Speak in Tongues. By Paul Eng. ABCNEWS.com (March 9, 2004). "Computer science professors at the University of Southern California, with funding from DARPA, have been working on a simulation program designed to help military personnel perform a more prevalent -- and difficult -- task in the international war on terrorism: communicating peacefully and correctly with foreigners in their own native tongues. ... The program is based on the graphics capabilities of Unreal Tournament, a consumer computer game that has been popular with game players for its team-based approach to virtual combat. But, Johnson and his team of researchers have tweaked the game by adding a 'speech recognition' engine and their own 'intelligent agents,' software code that 'reacts' to how a user speaks and what he says. ... 'We videotape one cadet using it and noted that -- as many have hypothesized -- that motivation is key to learning,' says LaRocca. 'And there is something motivating about the video game format.'" Entertaining Agents: A Sociological Case Study. By Leonard N. Foner, MIT Media Lab. Abstract: "Traditional AI has not concerned itself extensively with sociology nor with what emotional reactions might be produced in its users. On the other hand, entertainment is very concerned indeed with these issues. AI and ALife programs which are to be used in entertainment must therefore be viewed both as AI/ALife endeavors and as psychological and sociological endeavors. This paper presents a brief description of Julia [Mauldin 94], an implemented software agent, and then examines the sociology of those who encounter her, using both transcripts of interactions with Julia, and direct interviews with users. Julia is designed to pass as human in restricted environments while being both entertaining and informative, and often elicits surprisingly intense emotional reactions in those who encounter her."
Tough Love Between Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment. By Andrew S. Gordon. Proceedings of IE2004: Australian Workshop on Interactive Entertainment (Feb 13, 2004). "In this IE2004 invited talk, I’ll explore the relationship between AI research and the Interactive Entertainment field, from its seductive courtship through its rocky marriage, and offer some relationship advice for the future. ... The marriage between AI and Interactive Entertainment is one that is full of promise, where each side brings remarkable yet different strengths and problems to the relationship. With some caution toward the rocky road that lies ahead, there is every reason to believe that a wealth of new research problems will arise, yielding innovative new designs and techniques that expand our understanding of intelligence, interaction, and entertainment." Guest Editors' Introduction: Intelligent Systems for Interactive Entertainment. By Dina Goren-Bar and Oscar Mayora-Ibarra. IEEE Intelligent Systems, September/October 2006; 21(5): 10-12. "Interactive entertainment’s advancement has had a strong connection to artificial intelligence’s evolution. It isn’t a coincidence that for many years AI researchers have found in IE a fertile field to disseminate the products of their investigations. One of the main niches where IE has found successful adoption has been computer games. AI research has had a tremendous impact in this area since the release of the first Pong game in 1972." How Game AI Works In FPS Games. By Mark Hachman. ExtremeTech (September 6, 2005). "Recently, at the European Game Developers Conference in London, Arjen Beij & Remco Straatman, two AI designers who worked on the video game Killzone described the process by which AI soldiers try and hunt the player." Real-Time Goal-Orientated Behaviour for Computer Game Agents. By Nick Hawes of The Cognition and Affect Project at The University of Birmingham School of Computer Science Cognitive Science Research Centre. (September 2000) "This paper discusses the CogAff architecture as the basis for an agent that can display goal orientated behaviour under real-time constraints." A Practical Guide to Building a Complete Game AI: Volume I by Geoff Howland. GameDev.net. "Artificial Intelligence (AI) in games has taken the backseat in development for a long time for many reasons but the future of games is definitely going to be weighted heavily with increasingly detailed game AI. If your game's AI is not up to the current level that game player's expectations demand then your game will feel dated and suffer for it in their opinions. Game AI is not just neural networks and learning systems and complex mathematical structures, although it can be, but primarily game AI is about creating an environment and the appearance of thought from units. Game AI is behavioral, not scientific." The New Pet Craze: Robovacs. By Leander Kahney. Wired News (June 16, 2003). "Just as owners of robot pets like Sony's Aibo develop emotional attachments to their mechanical companions, people are acquiring similar feelings for their robot vacuum cleaners. The two leading robovac manufacturers -- iRobot and Electrolux -- report that owners treat their robovacs somewhat like pets. ... Scientists believe that robot pets trigger a hard-wired nurturing response in humans. It appears robot vacuums tap into the same instincts. MIT anthropologist Sherry Turkle, one of the leading researchers in the field, is conducting studies on how children perceive smart toys like the Aibo, Furby, Tamagotchi and My Real Baby. She says humans are programmed to respond in a caring way to creatures, even brand-new artificial ones."  Human-level AI's Killer Application: Interactive Computer Games. By John Laird and Michael van Lent. AI Magazine 22(2): 15-26 (Summer 2001). This paper is based on the authors' presentation at the Twelfth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI-2000).
Now the clucky get clackity. By Sue Lowe. The Sydney Morning Herald (December 23, 2002). "Not sure you want kids? By mid-next year, hesitant couples with a spare $80,000 may be able to have a trial run with a child-like robot. ... Like the Aibo dog, Sony's first biped can interact with its 'carers', expressing emotions through a combination of words, songs and body language. It can recognise up to 10 human faces and voices and adapt its behaviour according to the way it is treated. ... The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe has predicted 700,000 useful robots - lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners and window cleaners - will have been bought by 2005, as well as up to a million entertainment robots. Sony claims to have sold more than 100,000 Aibo dogs worldwide, mainly in Japan, Hong Kong and America. ... But Sony's move from pet replacement to child replacement could be contentious. Some researchers believe children, in particular, are at risk of developing emotional attachments that the robots cannot live up to. Teams at Washington University and Purdue University are studying the effects of life-mimicking toys on young children and the elderly. In the latter case, they are looking at whether the Aibo dogs could have the same mental health benefits as real pets. 'In the coming years robotic pets will become more technologically sophisticated, more animal-like,' says researcher Batya Friedman. 'As they do, our research suggests that they will evoke more and more psychological responses from humans. Is that a good thing?'" A PhD in Mortal Kombat - A pioneering USC group tries to get into the heads of players to learn if the pastime harms or can help. By Mary McNamara. The Los Angeles Times (June 6, 2004; no fee reg. req'd.). "[T]hese three and others like them are using their knowledge of games like Mortal Kombat and the Sims to further their education. As members of USC's Computer Games project, they are the local vanguard of a new academic discipline: video game scholarship. ... The research at USC focuses on the gamer rather than game design or development, and much of what they are doing is groundbreaking. ... In the past years, it's developed or launched studies into areas as diverse as the effect of violent games on brain activity, the motivation of gamers, the benefits of interactive learning, and the role of narrative and character development in the games themselves. ... In one study planned for this summer, researchers will test the conventional wisdom that interactive learning is more productive than rote. 'Everyone assumes children will learn more if they are playing a game,' [Ute] Ritterfeld says. 'But we do not know that because it has never been tested.' ... Here is what is known about computer games: They are the fastest-growing area of the entertainment market; last year, when games sales reached $11.4 billion, which surpassed U.S. box office figures...." Artificial Life meets Entertainment: Lifelike Autonomous Agents. By Pattie Maes of the MIT Media Lab. In: Clicking In, Hot Links to a Digital Culture, edited by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Bay Press, Seattle, 1996. "Apart from the more standard research questions, the design of entertaining agents also requires more novel (to a large degree to the Artificial Intelligence community and definitely to the Artificial Life one) questions to be dealt with, for example, how to model emotions, intentions, social behavior and discourse." Video games not necessarily turning kids' brains to mush. Kevin Maney's Wednesday Technology column (July 13, 2005). USA Today. "Video games might be about the best thing your kids can do to ensure their future success. Better, even, than reading. At least that's what two books (ironically enough) and a growing chunk of conventional wisdom are saying. Yes. Right. If you want your offspring to pay your Florida condo bills when you retire, better start telling them to put down that stupid Faulkner novel and get back to Halo 2. Which feels a lot like the moment in Sleeper when Woody Allen finds out that in 2173, cream pies and hot fudge are health foods. ... 'With most video games, at every point you have to make decisions,' [author Steven] Johnson says. 'You have to think about patterns and long-term goals and resources, and then you make decisions and get feedback from the game, and use that to adjust your decisions.' Which is exactly what a Silicon Valley entrepreneur does every day on his or her way to becoming a multibillionaire. ... Isn't the violence bad in video games? ... [T]he authors are challenging the belief that books are automatically better than video games. Johnson writes a funny bit about what critics would say if video games had been around for 300 years and books were just invented. The send-up calls books 'tragically isolating' and says libraries 'are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.'"
Experts Use AI to Help GIs Learn Arabic. By Eric Mankin. USC News (June 21, 2004). " To teach soldiers basic Arabic quickly, USC computer scientists are developing a system that merges artificial intelligence with computer game techniques. The Rapid Tactical Language Training System, created by the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Center for Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) and partners, tests soldier students with videogame missions in animated virtual environments where, to pass, the students must successfully phrase questions and understand answers in Arabic. ... 'Most adults find it extremely difficult to acquire even a rudimentary knowledge of a language, particularly in a short time,' said CARTE director W. Lewis Johnson. 'We’re trying to build an improved model of instruction, one that can be closely tailored to both the needs and the abilities of each individual student,' Johnson said." Read the story and then watch the video! Artificial Intelligence in Computer Games - State of the Art and Future Directions. By Alexander Nareyek. ACM Queue 1:10 (February 2004). Abstract: " If you follow the game development scene, you have probably heard many phrases like 'The main role of graphics in computer games will soon be over; artificial intelligence is the next big thing!' over the last years, and while you should hardly buy into such statements, there is some truth in them. The quality of artificial intelligence (AI) is a high-ranking feature for game fans' purchase decisions, and an area of incredible potential to increase the players' immersion and fun. However, if you have taken some classes on AI in university, it is likely that you paint yourself a very misleading picture of the AI methods used in games. It has hardly anything to do with what is called artificial intelligence in academia. After a brief discussion of the role of AI in game development, I will give you an overview of the current state of the art, discuss the future of this game development area, and provide some links to further information."
Blame Game - Gamers say social problems, not video games cause violence. By Annalee Newitz. SF Gate (January 14, 2002). Links to several online discussions are contained within the article.
Video Games Grow Up. Radio broadcast of NPR's Talk of the Nation (November 16, 2004). Hosted by Joe Palca. "Video or electronic games have long stopped being just for kids. The average age of game players today is 29 according to the Entertainment Software Association. Another sign of the industry's coming of age is the amount of money it generates. The electronic game industry made $10 billion last year, compared to Hollywood's $9.5 billion. Guests: Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired; John Singleton, director of the film Boyz n the Hood; Sherry Turkel, professor of social studies of Science and Technology at MIT. Has been studying computer culture and games for 20 years. Author Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet."
Sex, Lies, and Videogames - What if a computer program combined the action and graphics of a video game with the emotional power of great art? The result could revolutionize interactive entertainment -- and even change the meaning of “play.” By Jonathan Rauch. The Atlantic Monthly (November 2006, 298(4): 76-86; subscription req'd). Game sequel takes leaps in AI technology. By Dean Takahashi. Mercury News (September 13, 2004). "What's remarkable about this computer game, being released worldwide Tuesday , is that the domestic drama is not scripted. The characters act the way they do because that is what naturally unfolds. It's a quality dubbed 'emergence, based on the history of the characters' relationships and their own artificial, or preprogrammed, intelligence. Electronic Arts, which is publishing the sequel to the bestselling 'The Sims, believes this leap forward in artificial intelligence is what will keep gamers by the millions entranced with their virtual Sims. That's why the 140-person team that developed the game over four years took great pains to make the Sims, as the virtual characters are called, act and feel smarter. ... For EA programmers, a character appears to possess intelligence if it behaves intelligently. Behavior is a collection of actions and each action is governed by a choice. And so the Sims face a web of inter-connected choices. If they make a friend, they have the option to hug the friend. If the friend accepts the hug, they have the option to kiss. Each choice leads to other choices. The Sims make choices and therefore they seem intelligent." Research examines robot-assisted therapy. United Press International (December 5, 2002). "Computerized 'pets,' such as those coming from Japanese electronics makers, could approach their flesh-and-blood counterparts in providing people with social interaction stimuli, scientists said Thursday." Computer games start thinking. By Mark Ward. BBC (September 5, 2002). "This work looks frivolous but it could be profoundly important. Wittgenstein thought that human society, knowledge and language was hollow, little more than a tentative agreement that we all accept. Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein were influential on the existentialists who asserted that man was alone in making his way in the world. It could also mean that AI in computer games could help us realise that the world has no meaning except that which we choose to impose on it. We may be nothing but the imagination of ourselves. Suddenly computer games are looking very serious indeed." Fast forward to the future of games. By Mark Ward. BBC. (August 30, 2002). "David Braben, co-creator of the legendary Elite game and now head of Frontier Developments, said better-looking games had to be matched by improvements in the way in-game characters were handled. 'Once you have characters speaking to each you realise how shallow the things are driving these things,' he said. Mr Braben said that game designers had to develop new skills that made in-game characters more intelligent and capable of meaningful interaction and even conversations. 'Once you move away from shooting games, when you are face to face with characters and you are not necessarily blowing their brains out the speech part becomes much more important,' he said." What Sticks: Robo Sapiens. By Wendy Wolfson. Information Week (Nov. 26, 2001). "New computers will be sensitive to your emotions, which leads Wendy Wolfson to wonder about our relationship with robotic pets -- especially when combined with the human tendency to hack." Related Resources"AIIDE [Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment] is intended to be the definitive point of interaction between entertainment software developers interested in AI and academic and industrial AI researchers. Sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the conference is targeted at both the research and commercial communities, promoting AI research and practice in the context of interactive digital entertainment systems with an emphasis on commercial computer and video games."
ANTY, an intelligent huggy robot ! - a project at the Robotics & Multibody Research Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). "The goal of this project is to create a intelligent huggy robot. Anty is an intelligent robot toy that interacts with long-term hospitalised children. Its goal is to entertain those children and help them bear their stay at the hospital. ... Anty is more than just a toy, it is a intelligent and living huggy, having a personality of its own. Anty uses sensors for vision, audio and touch to interact with the children. By means of artificial intelligence, Anty is capable of understanding and expressing emotions." The Education Arcade (TEA): "The Education Arcade explores games that promote learning through authentic and engaging play. TEA’s research and development projects focus both on the learning that naturally occurs in popular commercial games, and on the design of games that more vigorously address the educational needs of players. Our mission is to demonstrate the social, cultural, and educational potentials of videogames by initiating new game development projects, coordinating interdisciplinary research efforts, and informing public conversations about the broader and sometimes unexpected uses of this emerging art form in education. Education Arcade projects have touched on mathematics, science, history, literacy, and language learning, and have been tailored to a wide range of ages. They have been designed for personal computers, handheld devices and on-line delivery." John Funge's "links to online information and resources covering many of the topics mentioned in the associated chapter [of his book, Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games: An Introduction (2004)] . For example, there are links to pages about the history of video games, links to pages about Game AI, links to path planning code, links to articles about finite-state machines (FSMs), links to online resources for machine learning, and many more. On the right-hand side of each page you will also find links to books that are either mentioned in the chapter or are otherwise relevant. ... You should also be sure to look at the Bibliography page. If an online version of a paper referenced in the book is available, then there should be a link to it." The Game AI Page. "These pages are dedicated to the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in games, a factor in game design which I'm pleased to say is being taken more seriously by game developers and producers than ever before. We've seen a huge increase in interest over the past few years on the part of both game developers and game players, and I think the trend is only going to continue. Hopefully, these pages will help." Maintained by Steven M. Woodcock.
GameDev.Net Forums - Artificial Intelligence. And don't forget to check out the other resources they offer at this interesting site. IGDA - AI SIG: International Game Developers Association Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence. " main activity of the Artificial Intelligence Special Interest Group (AI SIG) is its Artificial Intelligence Interface Standards Committee (AIISC). In addition, we maintain a newsletter on game AI and will further enhance this page with general game AI links and information soon. The IGDA also hosts online discussion forums to faciliate peer-to-peer communication and the sharing of knowledge." "NERO is the result of a joint project between the Digital Media Collaboratory (DMC) and the neuroevolution group at the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin (UTCS). NERO utilizes state-of-the-art academic artificial intelligence research in order to demonstrate its effectiveness in a game environment. The game uses AI to allow simulated robotic agents to cope with changing environments and situations, and form adaptive tactical solutions. The end result is a game that adapts itself to the strategies desired by the player, while still allowing the AI-controlled entities to operate as autonomous agents. NERO introduces a new genre of video game that is only possible with machine learning technology...." ScriptEase - Scripting Language for Computer Role-Playing Games. From the University of Alberta. "Creating realistic artificially-intelligent characters is seen as one of the major challenges of the commercial games industry. Historically, character behavior has been specified using simple finite state machines and, more recently, by AI scripting languages. These languages are relatively 'simple', in part because the language has to serve three user communities: game designers, game programmers, and consumers - each with different levels of programming experience. The scripting often becomes unwieldy, given that potentially hundreds (thousands) of characters need to be defined, the characters need non-trivial behaviors, and the characters have to interface with the plot constraints. We are currently developing a model for AI scripting called ScriptEase. The model is pattern template based, allowing designers to quickly build complex behaviors without doing explicit programming." TIELT - Testbed for Integrating and Evaluating Learning Techniques. "TIELT is a software tool that is designed to faciliate the evaluation of decision systems in simulators. Our initial focus is on decision systems that include machine learning components, and on simulators for several types of game engines (e.g., real-time strategy, discrete strategy, role playing, team sports, first-person shooter), with emphasis on those related to military simulators of Computer Generated Forces (CGF). However, TIELT can be used with decision systems other than those that have learning (or learned) components, and can be used with non-gaming simulators. ... TIELT's development is sponsored by DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office." - excerpt from "About" Wany Robotics, headquartered in Montpellier, France: "Wany Robotics software brings artificial intelligence to mass market products, giving manufacturers unprecedented potential to provide new levels of innovation and differentiation." "New technologies can quite literally change the way your products behave.... Wany Robotics will help you benefit from robust software and electronic designs that add smart mobility and autonomy features to everyday products, such as robot vacuum cleaners, home surveillance cameras, and interactive toys." And speaking of toys, meet Zig Zag Zog and check out this slot car racing system with an autonomous training vehicle! Related AITopics Pages
Other References Offline The AAAI Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment Symposia: "Interactive, computer-based forms of entertainment, such as computer games, interactive fiction, and software toys, represent a large, technologically-savvy industry that is actively seeking powerful artificial intelligence techniques. Until recently there was little communication between the interactive entertainment industry and the AI research community. As a result, the interactive entertainment industry may be overlooking useful AI techniques developed by the research community and the research community may be overlooking interesting problems and constraints faced by the interactive entertainment industry."
It's Come to This: Dolls Acting Like Real Babies. By Katie Hafner, New York Times Service (November 20, 2000) / available through the International Herald Tribune. An interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's AI Lab, in which he answers the questions: "What would you say is the most fundamental piece of robotics or artificial intelligence underlying [My Real Baby] ? and "Do you think it's good for children to have a doll like this when a lot of experts stress the importance of fantasy play?"
Building a Better Cat. By Saul Hansell. The New York Times (December 5, 2002). "When engineers set out to create a robotic toy, their calculations go beyond the mechanics. A look at how a Hasbro engineer tried to build emotion into a hit toy." Playing Around with Genetics. By Steven Johnson. FEED Magazine (April 14, 2000). "A new breed of video game lets you experiment with virtual evolution - and sociology as well. Breeding software used to be the stuff of science fiction and esoteric artificial intelligence research. Now it's coming to a video game store near you. What happens when Darwin meets Mario?"  "Robots bring dubious cheer to the lonely elderly. By Graeme Kerr. Asahi Shimbun (April 23, 2002). "The 80-cm tall robots do everything from bidding a cheery 'good morning' to checking response times to maths riddles to keep old people alert. Initial feedback is positive, with 60 percent of elderly users saying they prefer the robot's voice to a human one. 'They are a good substitute for grandchildren, many of whom live far away,' says Kuniichi Ozawa, director of the Sincere Kourien nursing home. 'They've definitely helped cheer up the atmosphere.' Unlikely though it seems, there is growing evidence that robots-like pets have a therapeutic effect on old folk. ... While sales of pet robots are still small, the Japan Robot Association predicts that the market will grow to 1.5 trillion yen in 2010 and 4 trillion yen in 2025. And with the number of people aged 65 or over in Japan set to rise from 22 million to 30 million by 2005, or a quarter of the population, firms like Matsushita, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Secom Co. are feverishly working on robotic aids to care for the graying population." A Furby's burbles, a kid's heartstrings. By Martha Woodall. Knight Ridder Newspapers / avaiable from The Record (December 2, 2001). "Does your child truly love her Furby? Should she?... Now [Sherry Turkle] is examining how children and others are being affected by digital pets.... 'This is a new direction for the old field of artificial intelligence,' Turkle said. 'It is now not just trying to make machines with certain kinds of intelligence, but to make machines that, even if they don't have a lot of smarts ... make us feel something. I call these things 'relational artifacts.'" |
