On February 15, 2017, Steve Omohundro spoke to the Million AI Startups group about the opportunities in “AI and Games”:

Next Generation AI Games

Wednesday, Feb 15, 2017, 6:00 PM

Bootup Ventures
68 Willow Road Menlo Park, CA

70 Members Went

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in computerized games is as long as the history of AI itself. With recent advancements in AI, new possibilities are emerging for building video games that take entertainment to the next level. In these games every character can exhibit human-like intelligent behavior capable of incrementally learni…

Check out this Meetup →

Here is a pdf of the slides for the talk.

Video games are now a $100 billion industry. For comparison, global movie box office revenues for 2017 are estimated at $41.2 billion.

Blizzard’s “Overwatch” has generated $1 billion in revenue (from their Q1 2017 financial statement). It is their fastest growing franchise with 30 million registered players.

AI characters, like Cortana in Halo, are becoming more important to games. DeepMind and Blizzard are about to release a version of StarCraft II as an AI research tool.

There are at least 5 ways in which AI will improve games:

1. AI as characters in games.
2. AI as player of games.
3. AI for improving VR/AR and game interfaces.
4. AI for modelling learners and tuning games to their needs.
5. AI for gamification of work and society.