acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

ACM TechNews

Pitt Researcher ­ses Video Games to ­nlock New Levels of AI


View as: Print Mobile App Share:
Repeated trial and error allows an artificial intelligence to develop decision-making pathways that branch off over time.

A University of Pennsylvania computer scientists designs algorithms that learn decision strategies in complex and uncertain environments, and tests them in the simulated environments of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games.

Credit: Shutterstock

The University of Pittsburgh's Daniel Jiang has developed algorithms that learn decision strategies in complex and uncertain environments, and tests them on a genre of video games called Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA).

MOBAs involve players controlling one of several "hero" characters in order to destroy opponents' bases while protecting their own.

A successful algorithm for training a gameplay artificial intelligence system must overcome several challenges, like real-time decision making and long decision horizons.

Jiang's team designed the algorithm to evaluate 41 pieces of information and output one of 22 different actions; the most successful player used the Monte Carlo tree search method to generate data, which was fed into a neural network.

Said Jiang, "Our research...gave some theoretical results to show that Monte Carlo tree search is an effective strategy for training an agent to succeed at making difficult decisions in real time, even when operating in an uncertain world."

From University of Pittsburgh News
View Full Article

 

Abstracts Copyright © 2018 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA


 

No entries found

Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account