Richard Bartle interview: How game developers should think about sapient AI characters

Richard Bartle is one of the leading academics on video games and is a senior lecturer and honorary professor of computer game design at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. He might seem an unusual choice to talk about the ethics of artificial intelligence, but video game developers have grappled with the ethics of creating virtual worlds with AI beings in them for a long time. Not only do they have to consider the ethics of what they create in their own worlds, the game designers also have to consider how much control to grant players over the AI characters who inhabit the worlds. If game developers are the gods, then players can be the demi-gods.

He recently spoke about this topic in a fascinating talk in August on the IEEE Conference on Games in London. I interviewed him about our own interests in the intersection of AI, games, and ethics. He is in the midst of writing a book about the ethics of AI in games. His aim is to point out the unusual moral and ethical questions that AI specialists of the future will face.