The Games AI Page: Net Projects

AI-Related Projects on the Web

Here is a short, almost certainly incomplete, list of publicly accessible AI-related projects found on the web. Most are game-related, some aren't, but all make for interesting reading and it can be fun to follow those that are still up and running.

If you know of similar projects that I've missed or if one of these has up and died (an all too frequent occurence, I'm afraid), please email me and let me know.

The OpenAI Project seeks to bring the innovative power of Open Source to the AI problem.

An extremely ambitious project, the OpenAI Project seeks to use the Open Source movement of freely contributed software to build an AI SDK that developers might in turn use for their games. It's an interesting idea, and one that might just work.

The sponsors of this project believe that there is a tremendous gap between the potential of AI, and its widespread deployment in applications that affect daily life. The OpenAI Project seeks to bridge this gap, by providing a community for AI developers, researchers, and enthusiasts to exchange ideas, and build upon the work of others. The OpenAI Project seeks to provide a powerful set of AI components that harness the best practices of the AI community, and the power of open source development. These are available for download by all, and can be incorporated into research, development, and commercial systems.

In order to be as portable as possible, the OpenAI engine is built on a versatile, cross platform architecture using Java, C++, XML, and CORBA. Reflecting the most recent object oriented, software engineering principles makes incorporating it into existing and new applications as seamless as possible. The OpenAI technology and code is available to all, researchers, industry, students, and enthusiasts. Code and documentation can be freely download and used for projects. Enhancements, bug fixes, and new components that those using the OpenAI engine can be submitted for incorporation into later releases.

The site already has an active user community, with quite a bit of documentation and code available for download now. This may very well be the best way for an AI SDK to really "make it" in the gaming community, since all the source code is exposed and modifiable if desired.

Find out more at the OpenAI web site.

GAC -- the Generic Artificial Conciousness -- wants to talk to you. An interesting experiment by the Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling group, GAC bills itself as the world's first computer program that will attempt to gain conciousness through interaction with the WWW community. You do this by talking to GAC and interacting with it in various ways.

The Mindpixel folks really don't go into tons of detail about this, but I'm guessing it's the front end for a very large database that gradually builds rules sets, neural networks, and/or some combination of the two to link information to inputs/outputs. For the moment you merely ask GAC various questions, which it then adds to its database of questions. You (the user) are then presented with a dozen or more questions that previous users have asked GAC, and (presumably) it updates it database based on how you answered those questions. This makes the whole thing seem "more intelligent" for the next person, and so on.

An interesting experiment, to be sure. Just remember--if you piss GAC, off now, it might just remember you once it does achieve conciousness...

The Excalibur Project is an attempt by German researchers to develop a generic architecture for autonomous AI agents that can operate and share information. The "world" in which agents will operate is to be a complex game environment, as this is one of the most challenging environments any agent could cope with (outside of RealWorld v. 1.0). Special emphasis is being placed on methods of agent cooperation and co-planning, which could be of interest to AI developers working on more mundane projects.

The Excalibur web page has several papers on the project, a newsletter subscription, and other information; you can reach it here.

Tierra is a fascinating project which has been around on the Web since at least 1994 and has had several papers written about it. (They've even gone so far as to add a link to the main page entitled "Media Coverage about Tierra" ...and there's a lot of stuff there.) In short, they were A-Life before A-Life was cool.

Tierra's stated purpose is "...to use evolution by natural selection in the medium of the digital computer to generate complex and intelligent software...." They do this by using a genetic-algorithm based approach to create little mini-programs that "live" on the host machine and compete for CPU time. Those which successfully use more CPU time are "winners" and get to reproduce. Random mutation of code instructions helps keep the gene mix ever-changing. They keep the mutations from producing instantly CPU-fatal mods by "faking" the instructions in a virtual machine.

Tierra's home page contains several interesting screen shots of a Tierra gene pool in evolution, featuring hosts, parasites, and antibodies that have evolved over time. You can also download a copy of Tierra for your own experimention, which is really neat to play with.

Tierra does a great job of presenting an easy-to-play-with A-Life implementation in an easy-to-understand fashion. The code is freely available for perusal, and the evolutionary process is fascinating to watch.

Highly recommended for anybody interested in pursuing A-Life techniques and technology.

SOAR was originally sponsored by the US military as a way of improving the performance and believabilty of computerized opponents in various wargames. It's since gone private. You can find out more at the SOAR project web site.