I've been in the game industry for a long time and I've felt the same way. This had the opposite effect on me though, I wasn't very interested in AI because gam

I've been in the game industry for a long time and I've felt the same way. This had the opposite effect on me though, I wasn't very interested in AI because game AI wasn't very interesting. Now I'm getting more into AI largely due to reading HN for years, but also because of interesting applications in computer graphics. There are games in the 90s that used machine learning techniques, Specifically Black and White and Republic: The Revolution, which were both worked on by Demis Hassabis who would later go on to work for Deep Mind on AlphaGo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis). I also think some racing games have used neural networks and some fighting games use hidden markov models in modes where AI adapts to player strategies. I currently believe the game industry will adopt machine learning techniques in computer graphics, animation, procedural generation, game balance, simulation (vfx), and offline tools before agent behavior. Although, if NLP and speech recognition get good enough I can see it that stuff getting used pretty widely in certain types of video games.