“CherryPi appeared to know when it could move fast enough to sneak around an enemy to attack its base,” said Gant.
While most bots advanced or retreated based on relative numbers, CherryPi was different.
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The bot came in sixth place overall (out of 28), but competitors did remark that it had unique reactions.ĭan Gant, a software hobbyist whose bot PurpleWave placed second, mentioned that CherryPi had a keen understanding of movement speeds within the game. Now that we’ve seen how CherryPi did at AIIDE, we know a bit more. So, it’s like eSports, but the players don’t wear shirts (so they don’t have to take them off).Īnd the best part? Facebook quietly slipped into the competition unannounced with an AI called CherryPi.ĭespite their recent big announcement of support for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), we haven’t heard too much about Facebook’s own AI research until now. It’s an interesting tournament, where the real competition isn’t exactly the game itself but how well the programmers have designed their automated players. That being said, it’s also pretty fun, especially when it comes in the form of a StarCraft tournament for AI called The AIIDE StarCraft AI Competition. Teaching AI to play games is some pretty serious business. So far, though, the best game I’ve seen AI play yet has been Blizzard’s StarCraft. You can see it in everything from AI that can help diagnose cancer patients to self-driving cars that don’t get confused by decals. In fact, judgement is something that has become a key component of contemporary AI research.
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Games are a great environment to teach AI how to make judgement calls, especially when it comes to human behavior. For example, IBM’s computer Deep Blue beat a world champion in chess back in 1997. Software has been using games for training for a long time. Facebook has their hands on some AI research, you may remember this fiasco from July when Facebook’s chat AI invented its own language. That includes social media giants as well, mind you. Every tech giant from Google to Apple has dipped their fingers into the AI boom that has come with Industry 4.0.
Now, video games are the inspiration for many of today’s technologists, and in a wonderful twist of fate, they are being used as training grounds for the future of AI technology. See the disparity here? I think there’s an obvious different age group being targeted.