AI in Games

Today's interview is with the authors of the textbook Artificial Intelligence and Games.

Guests

Georgios N. Yannakakis: I received the PhD degree in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh in 2006. Between 2007 and 2012 I was an Associate Professor at the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen. I do research at the crossroads of artificial intelligence, computational creativity, affective computing, advanced game technology, and human-computer interaction. I pursue research concepts such as user experience modelling and procedural content generation for the design of personalized interactive systems for entertainment, education, training and health. I have published over 260 journal and conference papers in the aforementioned fields. My research has been supported by numerous national and European grants (including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship) and has appeared in Science Magazine and New Scientist among other venues. I am currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Games and was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing between 2009 and 2017. I have been the General Chair of key conferences in the area of game artificial intelligence (IEEE CIG 2010) and games research (FDG 2013, FDG 2020). I am the co-author of the Artificial Intelligence and Games textbook and the co-organiser of the Artificial Intelligence and Games summer school series.

Julian Togelius: Julian Togelius is an AI researcher whose work focuses on creativity, video games, and open-ended AI, with contributions to procedural content generation, game-playing, mixed-initiative design, and evolutionary computation. He is Head of AI at Nof1, a member of Unity’s AI Council, and co-founder of modl.ai, and is particularly interested in developing AI that complements rather than replaces human creativity.