How video games help improve real-world AI

For decades, video games have been criticized for purportedly wasting time, stifling creativity, and even influencing violent behaviors. Now, it seems that video games have become an unlikely tool for AI researchers to improve their systems.

Seeing stop signs

Take, for example, Artur Filipowicz, an AI researcher at Princeton University who’s been trying to develop software for autonomous vehicles. This software needs to be able to properly identify a stop sign — which can vary in appearance due to surroundings, conditions, and individual differences — no matter what. Failure here could cost a human life, so it’s important for the algorithm to view lifelike, variant images of stop signs to “understand” what a stop sign is like.