Söderlund: AI "single biggest tech driver" for our industry

During our recent talk with Patrick Söderlund at Gamescom, we asked about SEED and how it helps EA become a leader and shape the future but during that same discussion Söderlund also mentioned the importance of developing artificial intelligence as well, something that will have benefits outside the gaming industry as well.

"So SEED is growing, and what I would say is that, if you look at trends in artificial intelligence today, what's happening with neural networks and machine-learning and deep learning, and how that will affect our industry, and many other industries, you know, if you start reading up on that and understand what AI is doing to the world today and what it will do, it's probably the single biggest tech driver for our industry going forward, you know? I think we've had games focus around animations systems, or 'this here we have a new animation system,' or 'here's a new shooter mechanic' or something. AI will be transformative in the future. And we believe that we have a role in that."

"So we believe, maybe you start out simple, maybe we already have it, because we publish it online, we have today a self-learning AI that basically learned itself to play Battlefield, which means we could maybe apply that to something as boring and simple as QA - just have it test the game and come out with bugs. That's the first step. The second step is, what if we took that AI and made it player-facing? What if AI in our game actually becomes a self-serving agent? What if you as the player are gonna have a hard time judging [whether] you're playing against the human player, or an artificial intelligence. That's very plausible, you know, within the next 24 months."

"And that's only the first step. Then you go into, what does AI mean for content-creation, for player-generated content? And then you start looking at that and it's almost like you can start thinking about AI as, what if you as a player can create your own game using our games and using our systems? And where you dictate the rules instead of us dictating the rules, and the AI will learn how to play the game. So it starts to become very different."

Do you think AI is as important as Söderlund claims it is for the future of gaming?