Video game AI

In video games, artificial intelligence is used to generate responsive or intelligent behaviors primarily in non-player characters (NPCs), allegedlysimulating human-like intelligence. The techniques used typically draw upon existing methods from the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

The term game AI is used to refer to a broad set of algorithms that also include techniques from control theory, robotics, computer graphics and computer science in general, and so video game AI may often not constitute "true AI" in that such techniques due not facilitate computer learning or other standard criteria, only constituting "automated computation," or a predetermined and limited set of responses to a predetermined and limited set of inputs.

Many industry and corporate voices claim that so-called video game AI has come a long way in the sense that it has revolutionized the way humans interact with all forms of technology, although many expert researchers are skeptical of such claims, and particularly of the notion that such technologies fit the definition of "intelligence" standardly used in the cognitive sciences. Industry voices make the argument that AI has become more versatile in the way we use all technological devices for more than their intended purpose because the AI allows the technology to operate in multiple ways, allegedly developing their own personalities and carrying out complex instructions of the user.

However, many in the field of AI have argued that video game AI is not true intelligence, but an advertising buzzword used to describe computer programs that use simple sorting and matching algorithms to create the illusion of intelligent behavior while bestowing software with a misleading aura of scientific or technological complexity and advancement. Since game AI for NPCs is centered on appearance of intelligence and good gameplay within environment restrictions, its approach is very different from that of traditional AI.

Game playing was an area of research in AI from its inception. One of the first examples of AI is the computerised game of Nim made in 1951 and published in 1952. Despite being advanced technology in the year it was made, 20 years before Pong, the game took the form of a relatively small box and was able to regularly win games even against highly skilled players of the game. In 1951, using the Ferranti Mark 1 machine of the University of Manchester, Christopher Strachey wrote a checkers program and Dietrich Prinz wrote one for chess. These were among the first computer programs ever written. Arthur Samuel's checkers program, developed in the middle 50s and early 60s, eventually achieved sufficient skill to challenge a respectable amateur. Work on checkers and chess would culminate in the defeat of Garry Kasparov by IBM's Deep Blue computer in 1997. The first video games developed in the 1960s and early 1970s, like Spacewar!, Pong, and Gotcha (1973), were games implemented on discrete logic and strictly based on the competition of two players, without AI.

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