Once AI takes over the world it’s going to want to kick back and play video games as well, and it’s already started with Pokémon.
Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic both in normal day life and inside the realm of video games, as seen by the outrage from game voice actors who are worried about their livelihoods after the industry’s recent pro-AI deal.
A more benign side of AI is adding it to existing video games like Pokémon Red, as fan Peter Whidden has done, to see if it becomes smart enough to beat the game.
Although it proved useless in the beginning, Whidden’s AI eventually figured out how to evolve Blastoise and beat Brock, the game’s first gym leader, but it was a long journey.
Whidden set out to learn how far his AI could go in the original Pokémon game from 1996, so he had the AI play the game 20,000 times, resulting in five years of simulated game time, to find out.
The AI started with no knowledge about the game, only pressing random buttons,but after Whidden added a reward system, such as catching pokémon, winning battles, and defeating gyms, the AI slowly figured out how to play.
‘It takes in images on the screen and chooses which buttons to press. It optimises its choices using something called Reinforcement Learning. With this method, we don’t have to tell the AI explicitly which buttons to press, we only need to give it high level feedback on how well its playing the game,’ Whidden. said.
To do that he rewarded the AI Pokémon trainer one point for catching a pokémon, one point for reaching a new location in the game, three points to win a battle, three points to level up, and five points to defeat a gym leader.
Once one version of the AI was rewarded, the other versions followed its lead to be rewarded themselves, and this is how the AI improves on itself through many iterations.
The AI even got ‘traumatised’, as Whidden called it, when one of the versions deposited a pokémon at the computer in the Pokémon Center, punishing the AI for losing a pokémon.
As a result the AI stopped going to the Pokémon Center altogether, which isn’t very helpful as it needs to heal its pokémon, and Whidden promptly fixed the issue with a new iteration.
After 100 iterations of learning the AI managed to figure out how to leave Pallet Town, catch and level up pokémon, and beat Brock.
It even evolved its starter pokémon Squirtle to Wartortle, then Blastoise, and found out that water attacks were super effective against Brock’s Geodude and Onix.
Whidden’s experiment ended once the AI couldn’t find the way out of Mount Moon, but there’s little doubt that with a few more iterations the AI could go much further.
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