Type of Research: Academic.
This article appeared in the summer 2001 issue of AI Magazine.
Also on this disk: John Laird’s PowerPoint™ presentation “Toward Human-level AI for Computer Games.”
Summary:
Laird’s article is practically a call to arms for the AI community. It is frequently cited in papers that touch on AI and the computer game industry and begins:
“Although one of the fundamental goals of AI is to understand and develop intelligent systems that have all the capabilities of humans, there is little active research directly pursuing this goal. We propose that AI for interactive computer games is an emerging application area in which this goal of human-level AI can successfully be pursued.”
And, later:
“The thesis of this article is that interactive computer games are the killer application for human-level AI. They are the application that will need human-level AI. Moreover, they can provide the environments for research on the right kinds of problem that lead to the type of incremental and integrative research needed to achieve human-level AI."
Laird discusses the advent of Computer Generated Forces (CGF) in 1991 and describes how he had hoped that this would be, “the right application for our research that requires the breadth, depth and flexibility of human intelligence.” However, by late 1997, “we started to look for another application area, one where could use what we learned from computer-generated forces and pursue further research on human-level intelligence. We think we have found it in interactive computer games.”
Laird then proceeds to enumerate the basic computer game genres (Action Games, Role-Playing Games, Adventure Games, Strategy Games, God Games, Team Sports and Individual Sports) and describe the AI challenges and opportunities in each category.
In his conclusion, Laird writes:
One attractive aspect of working in computer games is that there is no need to attempt a “Manhattan Project” approach with a monolithic project that attempts to create human-level intelligence all at once. Computer games provide an environment for continual, steady advancement and a series of increasingly difficult challenges.