Doom is without a doubt one of the fathers of the FPS genre, and at the same time, one of the first titles to allow matches with a high level of competitiveness. Over the years, all kinds of mods and bots have emerged that helped us polish our skills, but now, Doom has become the training ground for an artificial intelligence created by two programmers at Carnegie Mellon University. The AI still has a lot to learn, however, we must admit that aim is not its weakness...
One of those memories that will stay in my head until the last day of my life. Doom multiplayer matches connecting two computers with a flimsy serial cable that couldn't tolerate even the simple act of breathing next to it. Then we moved on to 10BASE2 connections using RG-58 cables with BNC connectors... and it was glory. Moreover, all of this happened under MS-DOS, manually loading things like LSL and IPX so that the computers could see each other. Then Windows arrived, some details became simpler... and I grew old. But the legacy of Doom remains intact, and it should be on any retro player's list. The latest news related to Doom presents it as a training ground for an AI that wants to learn to play FPS, and destroy everything in its path..
How the AI Learns
This artificial intelligence is run by Guillaume Lample and Devendra Singh Chaplot, two programmers at Carnegie Mellon University. The mechanism behind the AI is what its creators call "deep reinforcement learning", accumulating points for moving around the map, defeating enemies, and picking up items, while losing points every time it takes damage or dies. The video places the AI in a confrontation with a series of bots that use the basic resources of the game. These bots are not very good at fighting, since they never replace their weapons, but the AI doesn't care much about its health at first. After dying a couple of times, we detect more movement to pick up medkits, without decreasing its aim. Every time it got the double-barreled shotgun, its accuracy was devastating.
Results and the Future
For those who want to see the technical details behind the training, they can access the PDF published here, but I think the results speak for themselves. Artificial intelligences have the ability to play without pauses. They don't eat, don't sleep, nor do they need to hold the urge to go to the bathroom. The programmers say it has already defeated some human players. Will we see a special e-sports category in the future with artificial intelligences fighting each other? Time will tell.
HotHardware
