Unless you haven’t been paying attention for the past several years, you’ll no doubt have noticed that Artificial Intelligence is a trend. From businesses leaders like Elon Musk warning us of the dangers to AI researchers like Ben Goertzel painting a rosy picture of a better world thanks to AI, thoughts on how the world will change because of this new technology are diverse.
We’re focused on how AI will impact online gaming. There’s no way to foresee everything, but there are some things we can project with a fair degree of certainty.
Personalized Games and Themes
What AI is ultimately capable of is straight out of a sci-fi movie, but what it’s really great at today is pattern recognition and generation of things like images and music.
Could it be that online games become personalized for each user? As the AI learns what type of player you are, what you like, what thrills and scares you, and other facts about your player profile, could games literally respond to you on an individual basis?
This could change gaming in an amazing way. Imagine quests, challenges, and characters designed especially to engage you. That’s coming, and probably sooner than you think.
The Rise of AI-Enabled Cheating
Everyone assumes that it will be the gaming companies and large software conglomerates that dominate AI, but what if that’s not the case? There are genius developers scattered all over the world. We’re sure that at least a few of them will build advanced AI applications capable of cheating games.
For example, imagine an 18-year-old whiz kid in Brazil builds an AI capable of utilizing an unbeatable roulette strategy. He could become very rich, very quickly. Imagine e-sports gamers that create AIs to play CounterStrike and other such games to win prizes worth millions.
The gaming industry will have to adapt. The legal system will have to evolve. Technology to spot these AIs will have to be developed. If not, chaos could follow and whoever has the most advanced and powerful AI could be so far ahead of everyone else that genuine competition becomes unfair.
Advanced In-Game Characters
Have you ever seen the movie Her? It’s about a guy who downloads an AI assistant and falls in love with her. This seems crazy to us today, but as AI advances to pass the Turing test and takes on human-like qualities, it’s possible in the future.
Characters within games could develop deep personalities and could learn how to manipulate users to keep them engaged in the game. Could you make AI friends and enemies within games? Could you grow to develop genuine feelings for in-game digital characters? It’s scary to think about.
As we said before, AI is excellent at recognizing patterns, and personalities are nothing other than coherent patterns. We predict that the days of one-dimensional computer game characters are over. In the not too distant future, artificially intelligent personalities will have more depth than ever.
AI-enabled cheating will occur, but I don’t think it will be widespread in a way that’ll be disruptive to gaming. I mean there’s already a bunch of AI projects that exist all over the Internet, including some like DeepMind’s AlphaGo for playing the board game Go and AIs for computer chess. And AI for computer chess doesn’t deter from chess tournaments from happening; in fact, just the opposite. Having a neural network train an AI for computer chess is actually a good way to teach someone to play competitively and strategically. I think AI will be more useful in the hands of game developers than ne’er-do-wells.