The world of e-sports will never be the same if AI ever enters the arena. This week, a research team from Sony AI revealed that they taught an artificial intelligence program to play Gran Turismo with the best. And it beat them.
“[A]utomobile racing is a domain that poses exactly these challenges; it requires real-time control of vehicles with complex, nonlinear dynamics while operating within inches of opponents,” the team said. In other words, there’s a nuance to it — no less so in video game format than in actual cars — that makes it very difficult for a computer to race successfully. Until now.
Using deep reinforcement learning, the team taught the AI, dubbed GT Sophy, to compete in Gran Turismo: Sport in a number of different scenarios, such as by itself, with other competitors, in different cars, etc. Once it had the hang of it, the team asked some of the world’s best professional GT: Sport players — Emily Jones, Valerio Gallo and Igor Fraga — to compete against GT Sophy in a time trial. None of them were able to beat it.
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