AI innovations in video games will touch all of our lives
Technology development for video games will power the Metaverse, changing our lives in a profound and permanent way
Sometimes innovation comes from unexpected places.
Artificial Intelligence technology is disrupting every industry on the planet and the impacts are quite profound. Examples include early detection of fraud and money laundering in banking, uncovering the precursors to deadly disease states in healthcare, self-driving cars, logistics, inventory management and even human resources and retention.
However it is innovations from the video game industry that will ironically have the greatest impact on our lives, even upon those of us who have never picked up a console control in our lives.
In reality, the video game sector has been mostly stagnant and incremental. For decades, players have lamented lousy “AIs” that repeat the same mistakes in game and allow for the development of comprehensive strategy guides for how to beat each game.
Even the character animations themselves are unrealistic. Because creating animated characters is an expensive and tedious process, these characters have a limited number of possible animations and thus their motions in game are rigid, unrealistic and do not reflect how real life humans move under the same circumstances. They go from running to a full stop. They walk through barriers, or their feet walk in the surface of puddles.
All of this, however, is about to change. With the forthcoming launch of the Metaverse and the race toward augmented and virtual realities, The Metaverse needs billions if not trillions of assets. It is an empty world that needs to be filled with life, the non player characters (NPCs) who will interact with human players and guide them through their experience. These NPCs are everyone from the barristers at the virtual coffee bars to the lady in the red dress who passes you in the street.
Driven by that need, two intrepid pioneers are finally putting true artificial intelligence into both character animation and behavior, and the result is mind blowing.
Through the use of neural networks and machine learning, data scientists are using motion capture data to train models to move like humans do, resulting in an unlimited amount of animations and thus lifelike characters that react to stimuli in their environment just like we do. That alone is an enormous leap forward for video games and the Metaverse.
But perhaps even more impactful is the process of behavioral cloning and the ability to model character behavior upon the actions of real world players. These “clones” study how we move, interact, work, even play, then learn from us and repeat those behaviors. The result are NPCs that look, move and act in a way that makes them indistinguishable from human played characters.
This is not technology of the future. It’s the technology of 2022. Indeed, it seems that Turing Test is not long for life.
Of course, we’ve been talking about AR and VR for years, so why only now is it suddenly possible? The answer is the same as artificial intelligence, which we have known how to do for decades, but only now is relevant in the world.
The advent of cloud computing and better microchips, including technology such as SambaNova’s Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) chipsets, we now have both the computing and the training data to achieve what was once impossible. While hyperscalers like AWS try to be everything to everyone, new innovative cloud computing providers such as ORock Technologies are now laser focused upon creating a scalable, efficient and secure environment built specifically for artificial intelligence solutions. That massive and secure computing power is a game changer.
If you are interesting in learning more about this topic, we invite you to watch the inaugural episode of our new podcast, Tomorrow’s Vision Today. In this week’s episode, host Michael Puscar addresses the intersection of video games and artificial intelligence, and interviews two pioneers that are building technology that will change our lives forever.