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this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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The amount of times they say that NPCs are now "AI" powered not only makes me sick, but also leads me to believe that they are, in fact, not backed by ML.
I think you're misunderstanding this. AI has always been a term for algorithms controlling NPCs, including simple ones like the enemies in a Mario game. Nowhere does it say anything about ML, so it seems like (if the rumors are true) its just a much improved version of their existing AI tech, A.K.A. very fancy state machines and navigation algorithms.
Then they shouldn't call this 'AI'.
I'm extremely pedantic about this. Especially if they say it half a dozen times in one sentence. Blocked that shit site.
NPCs have had AI since before GoldenEye.
How old are you?
NPC a.i. has been standard for 40 years. You not liking that term doesn't change a thing.
Chill out.
It's been a standard term, but you wrote that they have it. But just because some idiots call it that doesn't mean it is, and especially doesn't mean it should be repeated.
Jesus christ. Grow up
You’re confusing AGI and AI.
AI has been around since the 1950s. AI techniques/approaches like LLMs are a recent stride forwards toward AGI (Artificial General Intelligence which is the sentience etc you’re referring to).
Its artificial intelligence for an artificial person. They don't have to think or be sentient or even be smart to be AI. It just needs to be an artificial intelligence.
They are not sentient, hence "artificial".
It’s almost like you’ve never played a video game before.
We’ve been calling enemy logic “AI” since at least the late 1980s. It again has nothing to do with ML, and no we do not need to all change for you because you decided to allow yourself to overreact.
The game industry has been calling that stuff AI for like nearly 40 years man.
LLMs need to stop using the term AI, there's more intelligence in a Half life npc than in a llm.
Except both are not intelligent, and both are now overusing the term to an absurd level. They chose to not write "Valve made NPC AI more efficient", they wrote multiple paragraphs with all sentences basically repeating "AI, AI". Calling something AI once because that's always how it's been - dumb but ok, but it's just used as SEO and clickbait now.
Once again, the gaming industry has used this term for a long time before these LLMs came and took it to push their LLMs.
You can argue the is a form of intelligence going on that is artificial with the enemies in videogames, they have to react to the character and the actions that character takes which aren't a pre determined scripted thing, so the NPCs have to make a decision on how they go about it, using one of the options it has. Which is exactly how say a security guard would think, they have a set amount of things they can do, they make a decision based off those choices and the actions of the 'player' and then perform said action.
where people go wrong is assuming the term artificial intelligence means something that thinks and acts like a human, but it's not.
The over use of the term AI is annoying, but the gaming industry isn't jumping onto a trend when using this term for how their bots think and react, now if you were angry about them using AI to develop or generate their games, I'd agree wholeheartedly with you, but we're not talking about that.
If you were being properly pendantic, you'd realize that the term AI has existed for fucking decades prior to the current LLM boom and even machine learning, and has regularly and repeatedly been used to describe the type of (comparatively) simple algorithms used to manage NPC actions in video games.
You may also know that Valve recieved a shit ton of press praise for the complexity of the algorithms and tricks they used to give their NPCs life in a large number of their previous games. Simulating predator/prey dynamics in aliens, command structure in soldiers, and even making the appearance of troops communicating information audibly (both human soldiers and aliens having specific phrases and sounds for different situations) all in Half Life 1.
With Half Life 2, they made a large stride pushing back against the uncanny valley through how they managed facial animations. They also made groundbreaking use of pathing nodes with different contexts which allowed NPCs to build off the communication and dynamically flank you (outside of the previously common scripted set pieces). Also some stuff that's escaping me right now with player led platoons.
In Left 4 Dead, they used one set of algorithms to direct the overall PvE match flow, a separate one to handle large groups of enemies as a group, and then even more to manage individual enemy entities when they were close enough to players. Again, groundbreaking for the time, with many PvE and horde defense games since adopting similar "director" algorithms.
In every single aritcle written about this shit, the term AI was used. In articles about monsters in the original DOOM, the term AI was used.
Effectively "it was our word first".
To quote Pinsplash, fittingly a Half-Life/Source engine modder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66qAlF_BvE&t=162s