US military study the brains of gamers to create combat robots

The fact that the military will use video games for their needs, even a dozen or two years ago, could only be imagined in science fiction books or films.

However, the future was closer than we thought, and now the “shooters” are really used to train soldiers and even get real punishment for war crimes in the game. In the United States, they decided to go even further and study the brain of gamers in order to create artificial intelligence for combat robots based on these data.

According to UB, in the United States the Institute of Artificial Intelligence received a grant of $ 316 thousand for such experiments. “The idea is to ultimately create up to 250 air and ground robots working in very difficult situations. For example, during a sudden loss of visibility due to smoke or during an emergency.“ Robots must be able to communicate effectively and adapt to such challenges,” said Souma Chowdhury, Principal Investigator, Grant Assistant Professor of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

To train combat vehicles, researchers intend to observe the activity of brain waves and the eye movement of gamers playing games in real time. For experiments, games such as StarCraft, Stellaris and Company of Heroes have been selected so far. In addition, a new strategy game was created specifically for the study, which become the main one in the experiment.

The developers will also observe how players make decisions about creating units and using resources to defeat the enemy.

“We don’t want the AI ​​system to simply mimic human behavior; we want the study to form a deeper understanding of what motivates a person to take certain actions. This is what will lead to a more advanced AI. ”

Studying the brain of gamers to create AI seems very plausible, although in the United States the military sometimes receive grants for completely insane for many but understandable research for us. Recently declassified documents showed that American intelligence agencies let millions go to study UFOs, parallel measurements and the possibility of teleportation. True, as a result of the experiments, it is not clear where only the money was teleported.