An Austrian research institute has developed what they call a “Neurotic AI“.

The Austrian researchers want games to be more engaging by having emotional, not just coolly calculating, computer players. Instead of just challenging your rational planning and decision skills, you’ll have use your emotional intelligence too.

They have created a few versions of the AI for the “Age of Mythology” RTS game, based on “the big five” emotional dimensions:

In psychology, the Big Five personality traits are five broad factors or dimensions of personality discovered through empirical research. These factors are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

(Quoted from The New Scientist Blog)

The AIs are able to switch between “emotional states” in response to gameplay events, based on their programmed personality. The neurotic AI was more prone to distorting the input it had received and change its emotional state in extreme directions accordingly. Surprisingly, this allowed it to win more matches than all other AI personalities!

The next step of the research, of course, is to pit the emotion-enhanced AI player against humans. This will be the real test for this kind of AI, which might finally create a worthy opponent for us human players. Today’s standard AIs’ formulaic predictability is no match for anyone who’s more than a casual gamer, and only serve as early learning tools or punching bags.

StarCraft 1 had its share of customized AIs – take a look at this project, for example. While Blizzard’s Map Maker series of Q&As have revealed several details about the upcoming customization tools, the ability to develop complex emotion and feedback-driven AIs using ScumEdit’s C-like language is yet to be mentioned.

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9 Comments to “Neurotic AIs Are the Future of Real Time Strategy”

1. Starfeeder — November 20, 2007 @ 11:37 am
   

   Interesting, would love to know if SC2 devs have done any work like this. Would be funny if a Marine got pissed off cause his life partner was killed in action by the zerg and he went on a stimpack rampage…

2. Eros — November 21, 2007 @ 4:37 am
   

   LOL the computer microing would be godlike. Most of today’s computers have dual cores. Now image if this AI would take complete use of that advantage, and even probably with good programmin, Neurotics computer AI could micro almost all units in the battlefield separatedly.
   Idk if THAT would be just a challenge, or a impossible computer play (oooh. that’s a challenge too ).

3. Arthur Santana — November 21, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
   

   Makes no sense that it would be a stronger AI. But this is not the matter, it surely might help the game against the computer being more INTERESTING.

4. Lonia — November 21, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
   

   there is an “story” update on starcraft2.com
   &
   Karune posted mapmaker series two Q&As.

5. Ken — November 21, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
   

   Is there any AI for SC that plays a specific progamer BO? For examlpe you want to play against a “Boxer AI” for Terran, or a “Bisu AI” for toss and “Savior AI” for Zerg? If there are any, is it available for download? I would like to play against AI’s like these.

6. GWAR — December 4, 2007 @ 12:37 pm
   

   Eventually there will be enough processing power to make individual units, not just a central intelligence for a whole comp opponent, take on emotional AI traits, both comp controlled and player units…

7. Joe — December 19, 2007 @ 4:37 am
   

   This is interesting – an AI that will become frustrated and make mistakes if I pester it using annoying tactics, or more aggressive. Maybe it could have a heart rate variable too, or other phantom attributes which could influence it’s mood. As long as it doesn’t start letting me win because it’s too depressed to finish the game then it sounds good to me

8. Starcraft 2 fan — December 21, 2007 @ 12:37 pm
   

   that AI would require a combination of expert systems, fuzzy-neural, neural and another form of AI that we may have not discovered yet…

9. Neuromancer — June 16, 2010 @ 12:33 pm
   

   Whoa, guys, bump!