Wolff Dobson is an
engineer in the artifical intelligence group at Visual Concepts, an 11-year
old software company in San Rafael, Califonia. Recently, VC has released
top-selling sports games, NBA2K and NFL2K for the Sega Dreamcast. Before working on NBA2K (and the
upcoming NBA2K1), Wolff got a PhD in computer science from Northwestern's
Institute for the Learning Sciences and then worked as a post-doc in the
Qualitative Reasoning Group.
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(or "Mom Wants Me To Get A Real Job")
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Friday
May 26th@2:30
3rd
Floor Classroom
Computer Science Dept.
1890 Maple Avenue
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Pundits, magazines, academics, designers, and players
all cry out that current video games lack "good AI." However, despite this apparent
MACK-truck-sized hole in the market, this year's crop of games has much the
same AI as the games last year and there is little sign of change (and
video game revenues continue to increase monotonically). Despite academic
research into advanced AI technology, that technology is not transforming
into exciting, AI-rich games. Why
not? What is "good
AI"? What is it used for? How can you distinguish good game AI
from bad game AI? How can we
transfer new ideas to a large industry that has traditionally existed in
parallel to AI research labs?
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