Most people have probably played The Sims at some point in their lives, but like most games, the behavior of computer artificial intelligence (AI) can never reflect reality as well as we would like. But the AI revolution of the last few years has finally begun to enter video games as well.
A study by Google and Stanford University tried to see how complex they could make the world by designing human-like video game characters that use artificial intelligence to support their decision making.
The game, called Smallville, follows 25 little characters in their daily lives, who have typical routines of sleeping and eating, chatting with each other and acting as humanly as possible. Each character has their own life and they live their lives as if they were real.
In an as-yet-un-peer-reviewed preprint article, the authors wrote that “productive units wake up, make breakfast, and go to work; artists paint while writers write; they form ideas, notice each other and start conversations; they remember and think about the past days as they plan the next day,” he continues: “To activate the productive units, store a complete record of the agent’s experiences using natural language, synthesize these memories into higher-level reflections over time, and dynamically retrieve them to plan behavior. We describe an architecture that extends a language model.”
Each unit is powered by ChatGPT, where researchers enter a single paragraph description into the AI that explains what the character is about. These units were given occupations, different relationships with other units, and even memories. After that, ChatGPT took over the decision-making process regarding each unit’s history, resulting in a surprisingly interesting community.
Units took on given lives and were able to interact with each other completely in character, recalling memories as if they were real. The researchers simulated events such as a Valentine’s Day party, and the units reacted accordingly by inviting others to the party anonymously and asking each other out. When the “party” happened, they coordinated to attend the party together.
The researchers concluded that integrating AI into this little video game allows it to accurately replicate human social behavior. If such models can be integrated into larger games, they can create evolving worlds of realistic interactions, significantly improving NPC behavior and inclusiveness of games.
Unfortunately, this massive AI power is processing-intensive. Generative AIs need very powerful hardware to work well, especially when expanding their capabilities. While this need for hardware can be seen in Elon Musk’s questionable bulk purchase of GPUs in hopes of building his own version soon, OpenAI’s latest iteration of ChatGPT, GPT-4, performs noticeably slower than the previous generation. Integrating such models into videogames won’t be something most people’s hardware can handle, so we’ll have to wait a while before we actually see them in videogames.
Although it is a distant future dream for us, we can safely say that watching this simulation is definitely impressive and exciting and gives an idea of the future of games.
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