Random Thoughts : Faking Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a massive topic and it's been done to various degrees of success over the years.

I remember tinkering with the Quake 1 code, quakec, back in those days and if I recall correctly (which I often don't), it was little more than a simple system that involved enemies looking to see if the player was within a certain distance and if so, they would switch to attack mode.

As time went by the AI systems in gaming got more advanced with more state systems for enemies and routines that seem to take place even when the player isn't around.

If you take up position in a populated place in Skyrim and just watch for a while, you'll see the same kids running the exact same track over and over again. An AI entity in some games will have a set routine, such as, get up, chop wood, go shopping, wander the town, drink at the pub, tend the farm, go home, go to sleep.

Sure, the routine could be temporarily interrupted by putting the NPC in a state of attacking, fleeing, etc. But after that event concludes, they resume their routine as though nothing had changed.

Even in non-gaming contexts, AI such as chatbots have gotten more sophisticated but are still severely lacking in terms of simulating reality and real intelligence.

The more I think about it, the essence of creating a believable AI is going to be found not in perfecting the way a bot talks or the routines it follows but by perfecting a way of providing providing believable stupidity and randomness.

It will be in the simulation of human errors within AI that will make them more "real". As humans, we are more complex than a state machine, more complex than a state machine of state machines. We have emotions, we can attack each other, be it friend or foe for emotional reasons, orders, or jealousy. We like to follow routines but it rarely happens. Our lives are chaos and our current attempts at AI seem to be all about defining order and ensuring that there is no chaos.

I need to think more about this topic.