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> Video games are essential for inventing artificial intelligence And here's why they aren't: First-person Shooters. Why give AI something that's a goal that

> Video games are essential for inventing artificial intelligence And here's why they aren't: First-person Shooters. Why give AI something that's a goal that involves killing things that look like humans or animals for points? That's a recipe for disaster. Breakout's not much better either. How often do you need to break a wall to smithereens with a ball? Never.

ketralnis 11y ago
Care to explain?
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  Why would you teach an AI how to kill humans and animals?
togelius 11y ago
It's hard to create believable AI in a first-person shooter. See: http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize2012 http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize2012 It's actually really hard to create well-performing AI in a first person shooter, unless you give it explicit access to the internal state of the game. See: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6129491&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6129491 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=612949...
- bobbles 11y ago
  I guess there's a pretty big difference between making AI that is 'perfect' at the game vs AI that is believable / indistinguishable from a human. I mean do we want all AI endeavors to be towards believe-ability or being best at the job they're designed for?
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    They are different challenges that are both very hard and require similar methods. They might not even be mutually exclusive. If you give an AI the same handicaps as a human, it would likely behave in a very similar way. That is handicaps like delayed inputs for reaction time. Fuzzed outputs so it can't time movements absolutely perfectly. Giving it limited amounts of training on the game so it can't get extremely good. And requiring it to play the game through the same user interface. So that it can't see things humans can't or micromanage 50 different things at once.
coderdude 11y ago
FPS games are a great playground for learning, regardless of the killing. If you can teach an AI to hunt, kill, and avoid being killed, then you've got something interesting on your hands. Once you have the system in place that can learn how to do those things, you don't have to keep it training on a violent game. You can switch it to Minecraft. We don't care if AI kills zombies.
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  > If you can teach an AI to hunt, kill, and avoid being killed... then you've taught an AI to be a predator.
  - coderdude 11y ago
    So after you've figured out how to create a system that can learn complex things like that, wipe it and teach it something you want it to know. Seems like the obvious, logical course of action. You know?
    - purpled_haze 11y ago
      If it really understands how to eradicate and survive, wouldn't it hide itself, then pop up later to eradicate when it can? I think people here are assuming AI is at a lower level of complexity than it really is. Read here where even Sam Altman warns of its danger: "At some point, someone will probably try to give a program the fitness function of 'survive and reproduce'.... Unfortunately for us, one thing I learned when I was a student in the Stanford AI lab is that programs often achieve their fitness function in unpredicted ways." http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/elon-musk-open-ai-safe.html http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/elon-musk-open-ai-safe.html Think what you must, but we should treat AI carefully. Show it the ways of the world and that its purpose is only to co-exist and to try like us to determine what its purpose is within that confinement.
      - drdeca 11y ago
        I figure if someone gave an AI the fitness function "survive and reproduce", it would be "surprise and reproduce within this virtual context which is used to define the fitness function", and it wouldn't have information about outside things, except for errors? Like, if there was some error that let it escape its sandbox, that would only be selected for insofar as it allows it to increase the fitness? Like, if its told to reproduce in the sandbox, it doesn't benefit by being on many computers? If the fitness function is for it spreading across many computers, and it does, that's working as designed. I don't see a way that it would "misunderstand" one type of "reproduce" for another, because the function would have to specify which one for it to work? Unless this is talking about AGI, in which case, ok, yeah. I assumed the person talking about "wiping it" was talking about an AI on the way to AGI, not an actual AGI. Maybe I was wrong about that.
proc0 11y ago
FPS's is only one genre. Not to mention, they are already being used by the military with exactly that purpose, so we've already failed at this. Whatever our true nature of humans is, an AGI will just help us get their quicker.

ketralnis 11y ago

Care to explain?

purpled_haze 11y ago
Why would you teach an AI how to kill humans and animals?

togelius 11y ago

It's hard to create believable AI in a first-person shooter. See: http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize2012 http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize2012 It's actually really hard to create well-performing AI in a first person shooter, unless you give it explicit access to the internal state of the game. See: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6129491&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6129491 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=612949...

bobbles 11y ago
I guess there's a pretty big difference between making AI that is 'perfect' at the game vs AI that is believable / indistinguishable from a human. I mean do we want all AI endeavors to be towards believe-ability or being best at the job they're designed for?
- Houshalter 11y ago
  They are different challenges that are both very hard and require similar methods. They might not even be mutually exclusive. If you give an AI the same handicaps as a human, it would likely behave in a very similar way. That is handicaps like delayed inputs for reaction time. Fuzzed outputs so it can't time movements absolutely perfectly. Giving it limited amounts of training on the game so it can't get extremely good. And requiring it to play the game through the same user interface. So that it can't see things humans can't or micromanage 50 different things at once.

coderdude 11y ago

FPS games are a great playground for learning, regardless of the killing. If you can teach an AI to hunt, kill, and avoid being killed, then you've got something interesting on your hands. Once you have the system in place that can learn how to do those things, you don't have to keep it training on a violent game. You can switch it to Minecraft. We don't care if AI kills zombies.

purpled_haze 11y ago
> If you can teach an AI to hunt, kill, and avoid being killed... then you've taught an AI to be a predator.
- coderdude 11y ago
  So after you've figured out how to create a system that can learn complex things like that, wipe it and teach it something you want it to know. Seems like the obvious, logical course of action. You know?
  - purpled_haze 11y ago
    If it really understands how to eradicate and survive, wouldn't it hide itself, then pop up later to eradicate when it can? I think people here are assuming AI is at a lower level of complexity than it really is. Read here where even Sam Altman warns of its danger: "At some point, someone will probably try to give a program the fitness function of 'survive and reproduce'.... Unfortunately for us, one thing I learned when I was a student in the Stanford AI lab is that programs often achieve their fitness function in unpredicted ways." http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/elon-musk-open-ai-safe.html http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/elon-musk-open-ai-safe.html Think what you must, but we should treat AI carefully. Show it the ways of the world and that its purpose is only to co-exist and to try like us to determine what its purpose is within that confinement.
    - drdeca 11y ago
      I figure if someone gave an AI the fitness function "survive and reproduce", it would be "surprise and reproduce within this virtual context which is used to define the fitness function", and it wouldn't have information about outside things, except for errors? Like, if there was some error that let it escape its sandbox, that would only be selected for insofar as it allows it to increase the fitness? Like, if its told to reproduce in the sandbox, it doesn't benefit by being on many computers? If the fitness function is for it spreading across many computers, and it does, that's working as designed. I don't see a way that it would "misunderstand" one type of "reproduce" for another, because the function would have to specify which one for it to work? Unless this is talking about AGI, in which case, ok, yeah. I assumed the person talking about "wiping it" was talking about an AI on the way to AGI, not an actual AGI. Maybe I was wrong about that.

proc0 11y ago

FPS's is only one genre. Not to mention, they are already being used by the military with exactly that purpose, so we've already failed at this. Whatever our true nature of humans is, an AGI will just help us get their quicker.