Dear Fellow Scholars, this is Two Minute Papers with Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér.
Today we are going to look at a new AI agent that learned to play video
games really well and learned some… really interesting things. I’ll leave
it at that for now and show it to you in a moment.
Now, first things first, the goal was to create a large number of procedurally generated levels,
these are created by a computer if you will. Here you see their AI driving on the Hungarian
Formula 1 track. The goal is that it would start to play increasingly difficult levels and see if
it has proper zero-shot performance, that is, can it play a level that it hasn’t seen yet. So
let’s switch to a previously unseen track. Great job, little AI! But, why is this so interesting?
It is interesting because of two things. One, it learned some really interesting skills in
laser tag, a little shooter game. Look. It learned to hide behind walls to evade
these shots. So what happens if a fight breaks out? Well, not a problem. It can
also dodge these bullets. Or it gets better, it can even run away from them. Loving it.
And here comes the interesting part. Second, this little AI learned to be a criminal. And
when you are asking, Doctor, how? Let me show you these little shenanigans. It can
not only drive on new levels, but it has also learned to force an opponent off of the road.
Ouch. It can also overtake by cutting corners. Very creative. But the creative elimination of
the opponent does not stop there…oh my. Are you seeing what I am seeing? Dear Fellow Scholars,
that is a hit and run. I can almost hear it say “Bye-bye, see you next lap!”. And if you happen
to meet it again, this little criminal can also block your cornering. And all this was trained on
a single graphics card. Not a cheap one, but one graphics card nonetheless. Really cool experiment.
So what is all this good for? Well, this technique could be extended to games that
require more than 2 players and we could see what kind of collaboration these AI agents can learn
together. Or… if you ask me, perhaps what kind of criminal rings they create. Kidding, of course.
And if you allow me, I would like to show you an incredible computer graphics simulation paper.
This one addresses something that we call the volumetric dissipation problem. What is that?
Well, look. We start the simulation with a given number of particles, and over time,
due to the inaccuracies of our calculations, they slowly disappear. Like a magic trick.
Don’t believe it? Well, look. We started with this many particles, and now we only have this
many. This new technique is able to create these magical simulations where the amount of volume
over time remains the same. So, does it also apply to messier scenes than this? You bet your
papers it does! Check this out! The scene can be an absolute mess, and it still works. And,
it not only works, but it can easily plugged into already existing systems, and it will work up to
2.5 times faster than previous methods. And all this with volume preservation. Loving it.
Now, one more interesting thing. Look. Only 500 people have seen this paper yet. So I am
really worried that if we don’t talk about these incredible computer graphics research
works here on Two Minute Papers, perhaps no one will talk about them. If you liked this,
please share it with your friends. Let’s keep the spark alive and show these amazing graphics
papers to more new Fellow Scholars.
Thanks for watching and for your generous support, and I'll see you next time!