In 2019, Sony quietly established a subsidiary dedicated to researching artificial intelligence. What exactly the company plans to do with this tech has always been a bit unclear, but a recent corporate strategy meeting offers a little more information.

Sony AI [...] has begun a collaboration with PlayStation that will make game experiences even richer and more enjoyable, say notes from a recent strategy presentation given by Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida. By leveraging reinforcement learning, we are developing Game AI Agents that can be a players in-game opponent or collaboration partner.

This is pretty much what youd expect from a partnership between PlayStation and Sonys AI team, but its still good to have confirmation! Reinforcement learning, which relies on trial and error to teach AI agents how to carry out tasks, has proved to be a natural fit for video game environments, where agents can run at high speeds under close observation. Its been the focus of heavy-hitting research, like DeepMinds StarCraft II AI.

Other big tech companies with gaming interests such as Microsoft are also exploring this space. But while Microsofts efforts are tilted towards pure research, Sonys sound like theyre more focused on getting this research out of the lab and into video games, pronto. The end result should be smarter teammates as well as opponents.

This tidbit was just one point in the presentation, though, in which Sony laid out numerous plans for its future growth. Here are some of the other ambitions mentioned:

For more details you can check out Sonys presentation for yourself here. Though, be prepared to wade through some absolutely incredible corporation-speak. We particularly liked the opening declaration that the company has now implemented structural reform that liberated us from a loss-making paradigm. In other words: they changed things so that Sony makes money instead of losing it! Got to dress that up somehow, I guess.

Read more from the original source:

Sonys AI subsidiary is developing smarter opponents and teammates for PlayStation games - The Verge