THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY IMPACT ON SOCIETY
GAMES AS AN INSPIRATION
Video games have proven themselves as a cheap, fast and “life-like” environment in which AI researchers and game developers can improve and test their AI algorithms. Nevertheless, video games have also proven themselves as a source of inspiration and a source of important data for other industries; this includes the general AI research field.
Indeed, Julian Togelius, Associate Professor at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, video games also offer an opportunity to think outside the box by applying the lessons learned in video games to new areas. For example, training an AI in StarCraft, a complex multiplayer online game in which the player must use strategy to advance, could offer management skills, he says. Indeed, to program their AI, video game programmers uses generally either the Monte Carlo Search Tree or the decision tree methods. The former is very useful to make decisions based on monetary value or decisions based on criteria other than value, like a schedule. The latter is useful for analyzing two possible decisions against each other. Thus, understanding the Artificial Intelligence’s way of making a decision based on the aforementioned methods used in video games can be useful for humans to make decisions as well in, such as banking and the stock exchange. (How video games, 2018)
All the interviewed students in the gaming design course stated that video games helped develop in part the overall field of Artificial intelligence. One noted that, video games need to “analyze human behavior to translate it faithfully [to the AI algorithm] to better the player’s gaming experience.” This analysis
Credits: BigStock
Furthermore, UC Berkeley has developed an introductory course to Artificial Intelligence founded mainly on the video game Pac-Man. The students of this unconventional course learn about state-space search, multi-agent search, probabilistic inference, and reinforcement learning. The students are required to make projects which link up to Pac-Man’s environment using search heuristics, evaluation functions, and feature functions. The video game theme adds apparently consistency to the course, as well as tapping into students’ excitement about video games. Indeed, these project design principles are meant to showcase that the course’s theory in relation to Pac-Man design can apply to computer science programming projects in general. After redesigning the course to integrate Pac-Man as an essential element of it, the course has seen an increase of more than a 100% in enrollment of the three following years. Moreover, students reportedly appreciated most the hands-on project surrounding the game as it motivates them as well as connect theory and concrete elements of their course. Thus, video games have unexpectedly been important in educating the future Ai researchers as well as motivating them. (DeNero, 2010)
Credits: Positive Psychology
Credits: App4Phone
Finally, and quite controversially, video games have been essential to gather data on people, the players, which can be used by other industries, including by Artificial Intelligence researchers. Indeed, Nick Yee, a former Stanford University researcher, and his colleagues investigated the relationship between personality and how players played World of Warcraft. Using the OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) classification, a widely accepted model in personality psychology, Nick Yee was able to find that the character class that players chose in the game, the equipment they acquired, and the quests they performed all correlated with real-world personality traits. AI researchers are so interested in investigating the difference between each player as it makes adaptive Artificial Intelligence and personalized services offered feasible. (Togelius, 2019)
PROLOGUE AI
For the purpose of this study, Jonathan Rouxel, the creator of a company using extensively Artificial Intelligence, Prologue A.I, agreed to detail the inner-workings of his designed voice assistant system. Through this interview, it has been possible to draw comparisons with the advancements brought forth by video games in the general field of Artificial intelligence.
VoiceTrip is the first application made through Prologue A.I according to its creator through which the user could access a voice assistant which is able to detail the many activities, services, products and places which can be found in the city of Montreal. Its purpose is to “project a reflection of a service, a product, to seduce people into buying into these”. Jonathan Rouxel was able to give “a voice” to Montreal, just like major brands have. The motivation behind VoiceTrip lays in the emergence of chat boxes, a concept which was heavily pioneered and improved massively by video games throughout the years. As Rouxel himself admits, chat boxes are a form of Artificial Intelligence capable “of creating empathy with people with whom they are communicating”. Similarly to NPCs in video games, the voice assistant in VoiceTrip transforms a text into speech in order to achieve its goal and create immersion. This is very similar to other voice assistants like Siri (Apple) or Alexa (Amazon) which creations were heavily based on the developments made by the advancements in AI in video games. The founder of Prologue AI himself states that video games have a “major” place in the overall development of Artificial Intelligence in our society, especially as he describes that AI has been used visually far before it has been vocally.
When looking to the future, Jonathan Rouxel explains that when Augmented Reality (a technology used often and improved almost exclusively by the video game industry) will be more reliable, Prologue AI will use such technology in order to transcend Vocal Assistance and make the experience of their users more immersive and compelling. The users will be able to “interact with their environment on top of having vocal advice given to them”; a concept similar to what we see currently in video games as Vocal and Visual AI will be used together.