Games

The idea of super-intelligent AI turning on its human creators has been a popular fictional trope for a long time, with examples including blockbuster films like The Terminator. However a researcher, has argued that our fear of this happening in the real world is holding back the advancement of beneficial AI technology. Anthony J. Bradley, the vice president of Gartner AI Research made the argument earlier this week in an intriguing blog post. In it he claims he's asked regularly about the potentially damaging future of artificial intelligence and told about how "scary" it is. In turn, he added that the technology is only scary because our expectations are based on popular fiction.

In a paper published in the journal Science late last year, Google parent company Alphabet's DeepMind detailed AlphaZero, an AI system that could teach itself how to master the game of chess, a Japanese variant of chess called shogi, and the Chinese board game Go. In each case, it beat a world champion, demonstrating a knack for learning two-person games with perfect information -- that is to say, games where any decision is informed of all the events that have previously occurred. But AlphaZero had the advantage of knowing the rules of games it was tasked with playing. In pursuit of a performant machine learning model capable of teaching itself the rules, a team at DeepMind devised MuZero, which combines a tree-based search (where a tree is a data structure used for locating information from within a set) with a learned model. MuZero predicts the quantities most relevant to game planning, such that it achieves industry-leading performance on 57 different Atari games and matches the performance of AlphaZero in Go, chess, and shogi.

A major artificial intelligence milestone has been passed after an AI algorithm was able to defeat some of the world's best players at the real-time strategy game StarCraft II. Researchers at leading AI firm DeepMind developed a programme called AlphaStar capable of reaching the top eSport league for the popular video game, ranking among the top 0.2 per cent of all human players. A paper detailing the achievement, published in the scientific journal Nature, reveals how a technique called reinforcement learning allowed the algorithm to essentially teach itself effective strategies and counter-strategies. "The history of progress in artificial intelligence has been marked by milestone achievements in games. Ever since computers cracked Go, chess and poker, StarCraft has emerged by consensus as the next grand challenge," said David Silver, a principal research scientist at DeepMind.

Say what you will about Kim Kardashian--at least she's a human. The next generation of the famous-for-being-famous are being engineered from scratch. They're synthetic stars--algorithmically generated characters who have millions of Instagram followers, show up in glossy magazines, and have songs on Spotify. She models for the likes of Prada and Calvin Klein, her first single came out last year, and she has sponsorship deals with companies like Samsung. Among her pals: Bermuda, a rule-breaking bad girl who models and touts brands, and Blawko, an L.A.-based Gen-Zer who likes fast cars and Absolut vodka, and who is never seen without his trademark scarf covering his nose and mouth.

The EA Digital Platform Data & AI Group is responsible for providing unified Artificial Intelligence (AI) resources across all franchises within Electronic Arts. Our group develops state-of-the-art machine learning, AI, and data-driven solutions to game team problems, as well as common AI infrastructure for use in every facet of the company. From data modeling to agent building, we utilize a modern, cloud-based tech stack with best-in-class tools to provide solutions and platforms empowering the future state of game development, marketing, sales, and player experience. We're currently looking for an NLP Scientist to join our team!

A few months ago, I sent my dad the article 20 Top Lawyers Were Beaten by Legal AI in a Controlled Study, which (as the title suggests) discusses a study on how AI can be applied to the field of law, and how it performs against professional lawers. An implication of this article is the potential to replace lawyers with AI for many common legal needs, such as contract review or writing wills. It's an interesting article and application of AI, which I spend a lot of time thinking about. It might seem pretty innocent that I shared it with my dad, and it would be, except that my dad is a lawyer. Yes, I was kind of trying to get a rise out of him (it's all affectionate, I promise).

One of the effects of the ongoing trade war between the US and China is likely to be the accelerated development of what are being called "artificial intelligence chips", or AI chips for short, also sometimes referred to as AI accelerators. AI chips could play a critical role in economic growth going forward because they will inevitably feature in cars, which are becoming increasingly autonomous; smart homes, where electronic devices are becoming more intelligent; robotics, obviously; and many other technologies. AI chips, as the term suggests, refers to a new generation of microprocessors which are specifically designed to process artificial intelligence tasks faster, using less power. Obvious, you might think, but some might wonder what the difference between an AI chip and a regular chip would be when all chips of any type process zeros and ones – a typical processor, after all, is actually capable of AI tasks. Graphics-processing units are particularly good at AI-like tasks, which is why they form the basis for many of the AI chips being developed and offered today. Without getting out of our depth, while a general microprocessor is an all-purpose system, AI processors are embedded with logic gates and highly parallel calculation systems that are more suited to typical AI tasks such as image processing, machine vision, machine learning, deep learning, artificial neural networks, and so on. Maybe one could use cars as metaphors. A general microprocessor is your typical family car that might have good speed and steering capabilities.

Now that Sony has revealed the technical specifications of its forthcoming console, including its powerful AMD Ryzen processor, SSD storage system for fast loading, 3D sound and 8K support, what everyone wants to know is – what will we be playing on the machine when it launches next year? Here are the rumours and expectations, some more fanciful than others, but each one a distinct and enticing possibility. It's been almost three years since the acclaimed post-apocalyptic, open-world adventure arrived – and its accompanying DLC, The Frozen Wilds, showed there was plenty more to explore in this glorious, machine-filled dystopia. Developer Guerrilla Games has a history of supporting PlayStation launches (latterly with its Killzone titles), so a Horizon Zero Dawn follow-up seems extremely likely. Ever since Rocksteady wrapped up its Arkham franchise with Arkham Knight in 2015, there has been endless speculation over a new Batman title set in the Arkhamverse from WB Montréal, the studio behind the spin-off Arkham Origins.

Much of it is the same as Value Prediction Networks, which proposes that instead of training a model to minimize L2 prediction-loss, you just train it to get the long-term reward/value right for a start state and a series of actions. That gets around a lot of the difficulty of using MBRL for Atari-like things, where it's very hard to accurately predict next pixels. But despite being an amazing idea, VPN don't use their model in a particularly intelligent way. They pretty much simulate a dense tree to some short depth, assign estimated values to the nodes, and use that for action selection. One is that you're probably simulating a lot of states that your value-function would tell you are DEFINITELY not worthwhile.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) could increase global GDP by 14 percent, or an astounding $15.7 trillion by 2030. This is due, in large part, to productivity gains from AI automation and workforce augmentation. AI will change the world, but it takes time to implement and train it. It's important for your business to understand how, when, and where to implement Artificial Intelligence, and it's often best to start small. The world at large is still learning how best AI can be used to benefit society.