Dave Mark’s post on Why Not More Simulation in Game AI? and the comments it elicited are right on the money about the correlation between lifespan and intelligence of supposedly intelligent adversaries in first person shooter (FPS) games. It is extremely refreshing to hear advanced gamers agreeing that more intelligent, longer-lived characters would keep a game more interesting and engaging than current FPS. This is exactly consistent with my experience with one of my employers who delivers intelligent agents for the military. The military calls them “computer generated forces” (CGFs). The idea is that these things need to be smart and human enough to constitute a meaningful adversary for training purposes (i.e., “serious games”). Our agents fly fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft or animate special operations forces (SOFs) on the ground. (They even talk – with humans – over the radio. I love that part. It makes them seem so human.) Continue reading “Real AI for Games”
The Semantic Arms Race: Facebook vs. Google
As I discussed in Over $100m in 12 months backs natural language for the semantic web, Radar Networks’ Twine is one of the more interesting semantic web startups. Their founder, Nova Spivak, is funded by Vulcan and others to provide “interest-driven [social] networking”. I’ve been participating in the beta program at modest bandwidth for a while. Generally, Nova’s statements about where they are and where they are going are fully supported by what I have experienced. There are obvious weaknesses that they are improving. Overall, the strategy of gradually bootstrapping functionality and content by controlling the ramp up in users from a clearly alpha stage implementation to what is still not quite beta (in my view) seems perfect.
Recently, Nova recorded a few minute video in which he makes three short-term predictions: Continue reading “The Semantic Arms Race: Facebook vs. Google”