Sony patents an AI to assist in games like a good player two

Many of us are guilty of giving up on a game because of a long grind or seemingly insurmountable challenge, but Sony’s latest patent shows the company wants to change that.

Some masochists enjoy the pain of being repeatedly beaten in games like Dark Souls – it’s understandable, overcoming those challenges is a great feeling – but most of us have a breaking point where the power button gets hit and the game just ends up collecting dust on a shelf.

A patent spotted...

23 April 2021 | Applications

Uber’s AI beats troublesome games with new type of reinforcement learning

Video games have become a proving ground for AIs and Uber has shown how its new type of reinforcement learning has succeeded where others have failed. Some of mankind’s most complex games, like Go, have failed to challenge AIs from the likes of DeepMind. Reinforcement learning trains algorithms by running scenarios repeatedly with a ‘reward’ given for successes, often a score increase. Two classic games from the 80s – Montezuma’s Revenge and Pitfall! – have thus far been immune to...

27 November 2018 | Research

E3 2018: Xbox FastStart uses machine learning to get into content faster

During its E3 2018 presentation, Xbox announced it's taking advantage of Microsoft’s machine learning expertise for its FastStart feature. FastStart learns how gamers play and what files are needed to be downloaded first. Microsoft claims this can half the time it takes for a user to get into their new content — if it previously took 30 minutes to download and play, it will now take just 15 minutes. Xbox has long had a similar ‘Ready to Start’ system where games can be played...

11 June 2018 | Gaming