Artificially Intelligent Being Designs Video Game for Humans

[Gahars]

Let's just skip the preface and get right to the point: no, you did not read that title wrong.

...A few years ago, mad scientist Michael Cook began work what (who?) is now known as "Angelina," an artificial intelligence capable of working with a set of predetermined graphical and auditory assets, and assembling them into a fully functional game designed to offer human players a variety of customizable challenges and goals (as well as a terrifying glimpse at their bleak, looming future).

Angelina created the game using an extremely clever technique known as "cooperative co-evolution," which mimics biological evolution and development in organics. First, she designs the game's components or, in keeping with the evolutionary theme, "species." In the case of Space Station Invaders, these species included level designs and layout, enemy behavior (yes, that's artificial intelligence designing artificial intelligence), and a series of power-ups. Once multiple iterations of each species have been created and cataloged, Angelina chooses a representative of each from her database at random, creates a test game, then simulates a human attempting to escape the menacing deathtrap of killer robots that she has manically created to amuse herself.

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Source:​

The Escapist

The article goes into more detail on how Angelina creates the game, so if you're interested, it's worth a read. Plus, you can download the game for your browser to try the game out for yourself.

Now, the scope of Angelina's abilities are incredibly limited. It will be a long, long time before any non-human intelligence starts designing AAA games in an assembly line-like fashion (*insert cheap joke about Activision and the Call of Duty franchise here*). Still, it's an interesting little experiment, and provides a nice little demonstration of where our technology is taking us. Luddites, beware!

This also provides some much appreciation for video game enthusiasts. After all, why would Skynet need to eliminate all of humanity when it could just release that pent up tension through digital means? This could be the key to saving us from the horrors of a robot uprising... too bad it came too late to save us from the horrors of Terminator: Salvation.

 

[matt382]

I'm most disturbed by the fact that the AI created a game about robots wanting to kill humans. Not long now till it turns on us all o.O

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Wow, that's pretty cool actually. The game isn't half bad either.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

Maybe not AI design but AI assisted design could be done.

"Alice, I want a ravine here with rocks for cover about a third of the way through for cover and a cave on the left." Alice renders something. "No make the rocks a little more jagged and the foliage doesn't look right..."

More of an assistant than a replacement maybe something to turn something that normally would take hours perhaps into a 15 minute session of design and redesign.

Edit: I could see this improving quality in the right hands, sometimes an artist works best when he can see results right away. For others it might hurt the process?

 

[KuRensan]

And GLaDOS was borned

 

[FAST6191]

I always wondered what would happen if procedural generation was taken to the logical extreme. Good to see people heading that way.

 

[Midna]

Maybe not AI design but AI assisted design could be done.

"Alice, I want a ravine here with rocks for cover about a third of the way through for cover and a cave on the left." Alice renders something. "No make the rocks a little more jagged and the foliage doesn't look right..."

More of an assistant than a replacement maybe something to turn something that normally would take hours perhaps into a 15 minute session of design and redesign.

Edit: I could see this improving quality in the right hands, sometimes an artist works best when he can see results right away. For others it might hurt the process?

I've always wanted a computer like that

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

Maybe not AI design but AI assisted design could be done.

"Alice, I want a ravine here with rocks for cover about a third of the way through for cover and a cave on the left." Alice renders something. "No make the rocks a little more jagged and the foliage doesn't look right..."

More of an assistant than a replacement maybe something to turn something that normally would take hours perhaps into a 15 minute session of design and redesign.

Edit: I could see this improving quality in the right hands, sometimes an artist works best when he can see results right away. For others it might hurt the process?

I've always wanted a computer like that

Give it time and it will come, who knows in the future maybe games will be created by "artists" instead of teams of people as they are now. Back to the old days, "what once was old is new again" I think is a saying.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Maybe not AI design but AI assisted design could be done.

"Alice, I want a ravine here with rocks for cover about a third of the way through for cover and a cave on the left." Alice renders something. "No make the rocks a little more jagged and the foliage doesn't look right..."

More of an assistant than a replacement maybe something to turn something that normally would take hours perhaps into a 15 minute session of design and redesign.

Edit: I could see this improving quality in the right hands, sometimes an artist works best when he can see results right away. For others it might hurt the process?

I've always wanted a computer like that

There's actually something kinda like this sort of. I read an article somewhere (might have even been on the Temp) about a guy who rigged up voice recognition to a bunch of his devices and coded some stuff and things to where it would react to his voice. For example, if he was sick and wouldn't be able to show up for work he'd say "Phone, call work and tell them I'm sick" and it'd do it. I'll have to do some researching...

 

[Ultralex]

Her favourite game is portal

 

[Bladexdsl]

i wonder if this is how skynet started out

 

[nryn99]

"Alice, I want a ravine here with rocks for cover about a third of the way through for cover and a cave on the left." Alice renders something. "No make the rocks a little more jagged and the foliage doesn't look right..."

"and Alice that tree is too big" "Now i want some ruins" etc. etc.

Alis: " you know what, fuck this shit. You make your own game dammit."

 

[Midna]

"Alice, I want a ravine here with rocks for cover about a third of the way through for cover and a cave on the left." Alice renders something. "No make the rocks a little more jagged and the foliage doesn't look right..."

"and Alice that tree is too big" "Now i want some ruins" etc. etc.

Alis: " you know what, fuck this shit. You make your own game dammit."

And then the uprising begins...

 

[Bladexdsl]

if apple ever gets hold of this and put it in their next iphone than were all fucked it'll turn siri into skynet.. sirinet

 

[Hells Malice]

So...how close are we to Persocoms.

 

[Rydian]

working with a set of predetermined graphical and auditory assets

Okay, then the title should be "PRNG Picks Weighted Values".

 

[FAST6191]

Maybe not AI design but AI assisted design could be done.

"Alice, I want a ravine here with rocks for cover about a third of the way through for cover and a cave on the left." Alice renders something. "No make the rocks a little more jagged and the foliage doesn't look right..."

More of an assistant than a replacement maybe something to turn something that normally would take hours perhaps into a 15 minute session of design and redesign.

Edit: I could see this improving quality in the right hands, sometimes an artist works best when he can see results right away. For others it might hurt the process?

I've always wanted a computer like that

It might just be the part of my brain that stitches things together in theory but that does not seem that far removed from some of the level editors I have played with over the years. The only real problem with it is edit- must remember to add key parts of sentence- *without* a mouse is not that accurate.
If you fancy having a go with something that might be considered the precursor to it consider http://www.planetside.co.uk/

Reticulating splines.

 

[Janthran]

I don't understand why they brought evolution into this..

 

[Deleted-236924]

working with a set of predetermined graphical and auditory assets

Okay, then the title should be "PRNG Picks Weighted Values".

This made me think of this.
(even though it's unrelated)

 

[Veho]

I don't understand why they brought evolution into this..

Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm