Many years ago there was an AI game for PC called Creatures, using neural nets for the Norns, the characters you would raise in the game by training them. The

Many years ago there was an AI game for PC called Creatures, using neural nets for the Norns, the characters you would raise in the game by training them. The devs who wrote it were originally writing AI software for fighter pilots, and continually won simulated engagements because the AIs had no body-based limitations, which opened up a range of maneuvers that would literally kill a human. The best example of such is a hard dive: if you're flying level, and dive too quickly, the G forces drive all the blood into your brain, potentially causing a hemhorrage. The maneuver human pilots use for a hard dive includes a half barrel roll just to avoid this, and it's still less effective than suddenly pointing down. The AIs used hard dives effectively to shed human pursuers. This led to the insight that bodies (in some sense) were a missing component of any human-like AI, so they made Creatures to test the theory. The neural nets had virtual bodies with hunger, fatique, and pleasure/pain receptors; the player interacted with a god-like hand cursor that could pet them or spank them. For the 90s, it worked pretty well on Windows 98.