AI Goes Gaming
Remember Seymour Cray, the guy that built the CDC 6600 in the mid-1960’s, a ‘popular’ supercomputer that outperformed IBM’s (IBM) 7030, the leader at the time, by a significant margin. He eventually formed Cray Computer, which he led until his death in a car accident. But Cray and others who had an undying aspiration to create faster supercomputers laid the groundwork for larger and faster machines that now make those early machines look like car radios. That said, statistics about supercomputers are bandied about among the AI cognoscenti, but have little relevance to the average global citizen, unless they can equate said machines to something practical, like a game.
Enter Deep Blue (aka Deep Thought) an IBM creation that was the first supercomputer to win against a human player, beating world champion Gary Kasparov in a match in 1996 and then Watson, who beat Jeopardy master Ken Jennings in 2011. Since then there have been innumerable face offs between humans and computers, with the most recent being a device specifically designed to play the Sony (SNE) Playstaion based game Gran Turismo named Sophy, whose AI algos and training based on collecting data from over 1,000 Playstation 4 consoles, has given it the ability to “…learn an integrated control policy that combines exceptional speed with impressive tactics” according to the company, with Sony adding “In addition, we construct a reward function that enables the agent to be competitive while adhering to racing’s important, but underspecified, sportsmanship rules.”
Sophy has beaten four of the world’s best Gran Turismo drivers in direct contests, proving here computational worth, but without the crushing psychological blow to her opponents that the obvious superiority of the computer could normally bring. Sophy has a heart, which seemed to spark a flame in the minds of her opponents, a crowd bored after defeating player after player for years, opening them up to a new challenge in a game that already requires considerable skill in balancing judgement against physical constraints. Sony built in ‘penalties’ to Sophy’s algorithms that keep her from colliding with others to push them off the track, in other words (Sony’s words) “…to embody the subtle nuances of human character.”
So if you have a young one who sits in front of a screen with a controller in his/her hand for hours at a time, perhaps they will learn a bit of humanity if Sony builds a bit of Sophy into the next Gran Turismo iteration., or perhaps they will quickly learn that the only way they can beat such an emotional machine is to let loose more of that ‘killer instinct’ that is a prized commodity in many cirles and drive Sophy off the road. If it turns out that Little Bobby or Susie is able to defeat Sophy by bending those ‘sportsmanship-like rules’ a bit, perhaps Sony should add back a little of that killer instinct to Sophy II, although a kinder, gentler AI could be a good thing, sort of a C3PO without all the issues. It’s a strange world we live in…
Enter Deep Blue (aka Deep Thought) an IBM creation that was the first supercomputer to win against a human player, beating world champion Gary Kasparov in a match in 1996 and then Watson, who beat Jeopardy master Ken Jennings in 2011. Since then there have been innumerable face offs between humans and computers, with the most recent being a device specifically designed to play the Sony (SNE) Playstaion based game Gran Turismo named Sophy, whose AI algos and training based on collecting data from over 1,000 Playstation 4 consoles, has given it the ability to “…learn an integrated control policy that combines exceptional speed with impressive tactics” according to the company, with Sony adding “In addition, we construct a reward function that enables the agent to be competitive while adhering to racing’s important, but underspecified, sportsmanship rules.”
Sophy has beaten four of the world’s best Gran Turismo drivers in direct contests, proving here computational worth, but without the crushing psychological blow to her opponents that the obvious superiority of the computer could normally bring. Sophy has a heart, which seemed to spark a flame in the minds of her opponents, a crowd bored after defeating player after player for years, opening them up to a new challenge in a game that already requires considerable skill in balancing judgement against physical constraints. Sony built in ‘penalties’ to Sophy’s algorithms that keep her from colliding with others to push them off the track, in other words (Sony’s words) “…to embody the subtle nuances of human character.”
So if you have a young one who sits in front of a screen with a controller in his/her hand for hours at a time, perhaps they will learn a bit of humanity if Sony builds a bit of Sophy into the next Gran Turismo iteration., or perhaps they will quickly learn that the only way they can beat such an emotional machine is to let loose more of that ‘killer instinct’ that is a prized commodity in many cirles and drive Sophy off the road. If it turns out that Little Bobby or Susie is able to defeat Sophy by bending those ‘sportsmanship-like rules’ a bit, perhaps Sony should add back a little of that killer instinct to Sophy II, although a kinder, gentler AI could be a good thing, sort of a C3PO without all the issues. It’s a strange world we live in…
Sophy's 'School'- CPUs & GPUs used to collect PS4 data - Source: granturismproject.com
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