New AI Chip Would Make Games Smarter

[Krell]

ExtremeTech Headlines

By Mark Hachman

LONDON – Imagine sneaking up on an elite soldier when suddenly alarm bells sound. The soldier, spotting you in your role as a superspy, immediately yells, dodges once or twice, then runs facefirst into a wall.
Sound familiar? It probably does, because that's the scenario Israeli startup AIseek hopes to eliminate forever from the multibillion-dollar world of video games.

When completed, AIseek's AIS-1 chip would improve one of the key weak points of computer games, executives said. While the multi-billion graphics industry led by ATI and Nvidia spun off from the need for dedicated graphics accelerators, gamers have complained for years that the artificial intelligence, the coding that defines the artificial behaviors of the "opponents" that a gamer competes against, has demanded its own improvements.

AIseek has developed a hardware prototype of its technology that it already has in house, Assaf Mendelson, founder and lead programmer of the company, told ExtremeTech on Thursday. Although the company has not begun discussing its technology in detail, Mendelson said that up to two versions of the chip are planned: one, like the Ageia PhysX chip that was introduced last year, would be mounted on an add-on card for PCs, or possibly mounted inside a video-game console. A second lower-power version may also be developed; in a novel twist, the company could market it inside a USB key, Mendelson said.

Artificial intelligence within games varies dramatically, and refining the models has been the subject of research papers as well as presentations at forums like the Europe Game Developers Conference here.

Eve developers themselves have bemoaned the state of AI. "Ninety percent of video game AI really is pretty damn bad," Matthew Perry, who founded game developer Shiny Entertainment, told an MIT audience. "I think that's actually why it's so much fun to shoot things. Because the AI is so bad and the characters are so annoying."

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[Mels_Smileys45]

AI scares me! One day theres gonna be a reckoning I reckon and zero one will become reality