What do we mean by AI?
It stands for artificial intelligence and depending on how you look at it, it could range from NPC’s behaviors in games to matching people with the same playstyles together in online games
How it started:
Many think that the implementation of AI in video games is something relatively recent, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, the 1972 game “pong” (and yeah I mean this pong) was allegedly recognized as the first game ever to feature artificial intelligence when it allowed its players to face the computer instead of a human opponent, the game was so revolutionary it made people think the machine was actually able to think for itself, of course, that wasn’t the case. It will never be like that, games, after all, are smokes and mirrors, the trick is to make it believable just enough.
The current appliance of AI (real life and games)
Nowadays, AI is everywhere, from your car, your GPU and CPU, to even your smartphone, it helps in various tasks like semi to full auto driving, to getting more FPS in games due to better methods of AA (anti-aliasing) and taking better pictures through your smartphone camera, in video games world, AI has enabled games to have an amazing level of depth when it comes to interacting with NPCs (non-player characters), also it helped immensely with fighting cheating in multiplayer games.
The genuine concerns of people
Of course with technological breakthrough, it changes the way people live and work, just like we don’t need someone to light our streetlights manually, someone to drive the horse carriage for us, or even a person to help us pick the best movie to rent from the shop, people are concerned about being replaced by AI tools like midjourney, stable diffusion and DALLE for art, and Chat GPT for writers, the idea of a computer program that could spit a couple of pictures in mere seconds based on a text prompt wasn’t even thinkable 3 years ago, however, it’s a reality today, and one we need to deal with.
Why shouldn’t we be worried
Even if the current AI tools got rid of their issues (mainly with consistency and the coherence of the results) they still wouldn’t replace an artist in its field, same goes for writers, the level of artistic knowledge and refinement you need in order to make every art blends seemingly in one or multiple games couldn’t be described simply by writing words, same goes for writers, you need a deep understanding of a certain topic to even begin to write about and that couldn’t possibly be fit within a text prompt.
Final notes
I want to highlight some a use of the technology as it should and was originally meant to be which is brainstorming, Chat GPT is great for suggesting ideas to write about, and the image creation tools are great for conceptualizing an idea or could work like a base to better deliver an idea to the artist to draw.
References:
How Do DALL·E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney Work? – MarkTechPost.
Video Game Design: The History of AI – Developers.dev
Role of Artificial Intelligence in Gaming – Pianalytix – Machine Learning
Proximal Policy Optimization
History of AI design in video games and its development in RTS games – Final Step.
20 jobs that don’t exist anymore – Study Work Grow
Featured image by: Frmorrison