Murray Campbell
Distinguished Research Staff Member, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
How games shaped AI research
Why games keep returning to the center of AI research, told from the perspective of a team that helped build Deep Blue.
Open the noteIEEE CIG 2017 / Conference archive
Games became the testbed.Intelligence was the experiment.
In August 2017, the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence in Games brought researchers, designers, and students to NYU in Brooklyn for four days of papers, competitions, talks, and play.
- Dates
- 22 to 25 August 2017
- Host
- NYU Brooklyn
- Program
- 11 paper sessions
- Papers
- 46 recorded
- Contests
- 12 competitions
Brooklyn / 2017
01 / The week
Four days, one shared question.
The figures come from the archived 2017 program. Open the full record.
Tuesday
22 August
Two paper sessions on search and player models, then the first competition session.
Day one
Wednesday
23 August
Best paper nominees, character behavior, strategy games, and a late session on learning to play.
Day two
Thursday
24 August
A block of short papers, procedural content, and the second competition session.
Day three
Friday
25 August
General video game AI, more procedural work, and the closing session on frameworks.
Day four
46papers listed across the paper sessions
12competitions, including multiple tracks
3keynote talks
02 / Keynotes
Three views from the edge of the field.
Joanna Bryson
Reader, University of Bath; affiliate, Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
Ethics, games, and the roles we play
Ethics as social behavior, seen through two games and the choices that designers and researchers make.
Open the noteMitu Khandaker
Chief Creative Officer, Spirit AI; Assistant Arts Professor, NYU Game Center
Narrative design and AI
Narrative as a design material for AI, and what changes when characters and story structure become systems.
Open the note03 / Program
Six conversations from the week.
Session themes, chairs, and times are recorded on the program page.
01 / Search
Search that plans ahead
Tree search, dynamic difficulty, and the problem of choosing a move when the future is wide open.
Tuesday session one
02 / Players
Models of the player
What a game can infer from behavior, and how those inferences change the experience.
Tuesday session two
03 / Characters
Characters that feel present
Intent, social behavior, and the small signals that make a non player character feel present.
Wednesday session four
04 / Strategy
Strategy at machine speed
Real time strategy, resource management, and the uncertainty that comes with many units and many choices.
Wednesday session five
05 / Generation
Worlds made by algorithms
Levels, maps, and dungeons generated with search, patterns, and machine learning.
Thursday session seven
06 / General AI
Agents that meet new games
Controllers that must perform without knowing the rules, the levels, or the game in advance.
Friday session eight
04 / Competitions
Twelve contests. One question.
Can an agent learn to play well? The 2017 competitions turned that question into a public test.
05 / Venue
Brooklyn, on foot.
The conference occupied the eighth floor of NYU's building at 2 MetroTech Center, a short walk from several subway lines in Downtown Brooklyn.
2 MetroTech CenterEighth floor / Downtown Brooklyn / New York
06 / Index
Every page in the record.
The archive keeps the conference structure in place, including the pages that are no longer linked from the main menu.
Events
The record remains
The week is over. The ideas are not.
Follow the sessions in order, or start with the contests and work backward. Every page in the 2017 record is open.