Hosted by Ben Byford, The Machine Ethics Podcast brings together interviews with academics, authors, business leaders, designers and engineers on the subject of autonomous algorithms, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and technology's impact on society. This first Deepdive episode we talk to Amandine Flachs, Tommy Thompson and Richard Bartle about AI in games, its history, its uses and where it's going. After supporting startups founders for more than 10 years, she is now looking to help game developers create smarter and more human-like game AIs using machine learning. Amandine is still involved in the startup ecosystem as a mentor, venture scout and through her series of live AMAs with early-stage entrepreneurs. She can be found on Twitter @AmandineFlachs.

Richard Bartle is one of the leading academics on video games and is a senior lecturer and honorary professor of computer game design at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. He might seem an unusual choice to talk about the ethics of artificial intelligence, but video game developers have grappled with the ethics of creating virtual worlds with AI beings in them for a long time. Not only do they have to consider the ethics of what they create in their own worlds, the game designers also have to consider how much control to grant players over the AI characters who inhabit the worlds. If game developers are the gods, then players can be the demi-gods. He recently spoke about this topic in a fascinating talk in August on the IEEE Conference on Games in London. I interviewed him about our own interests in the intersection of AI, games, and ethics. He is in the midst of writing a book about the ethics of AI in games.

Grand Theft Auto, that most lavish and notorious of all modern videogames, offers countless ways for players to behave. Much of this conduct, if acted out in our reality, would be considered somewhere between impolite and morally reprehensible. Want to pull a driver from her car, take the wheel, and motor along a sidewalk? Eager to steal a bicycle from a 10-year-old boy? Want to stave off boredom by standing on a clifftop to take pot shots at the screaming gulls?

Grand Theft Auto, that most lavish and notorious of all modern videogames, offers countless ways for players to behave. Much of this conduct, if acted out in our reality, would be considered somewhere between impolite and morally reprehensible. Want to pull a driver from her car, take the wheel, and motor along a sidewalk? Eager to steal a bicycle from a 10-year-old boy? Want to stave off boredom by standing on a clifftop to take pot shots at the screaming gulls?