Gran Turismo Sophy: Sony Announces AI That Can Compete with the Best GT Sport Drivers in the World

[Tsing]

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment



Artificial intelligence isn’t only going to take people’s jobs; it’s also going to beat everyone at Gran Turismo, according to a new development by the experts at Sony AI, Polyphony Digital, and Sony Interactive Entertainment’s cloud gaming team, who today introduced Gran Turismo Sophy, a new AI that was trained to compete with the best of the best in PlayStation’s leading racing series. Described by an executive as an “AI agent that learned to drive by itself at a very competitive level,” Sophy started off as something that couldn’t even drive in a straight line but later evolved into a proficient driver thanks to novel reinforcement learning techniques. A competition that took place in October 2021 proved that Sophy can not only beat human players but also adapt to major driving errors that could easily cost the AI a...

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[MadMummy76]

Wait a minute, AI drivers always had an unfair advantage in games. They are not based on a visual interpretation of what is happening on screen. They get fed raw data, that is unambiguous and needs zero interpretation.

Of course it is a different challenge to make an actual self taught AI drive fast in a game, but it is really a solution to a non-problem.

I'm more interested if they finally managed to make a realistic clutch.

 

[Brian_B]

Wait a minute, AI drivers always had an unfair advantage in games. They are not based on a visual interpretation of what is happening on screen. They get fed raw data, that is unambiguous and needs zero interpretation.

Depends on how it's implemented -- if you have it reading directly from the system RAM, yeah, you are right. But you could also implement and AI that uses a camera to watch the screen, and actuators to push the same buttons on the same control scheme that a player would. It probably wouldn't be all that much different, to be honest, as reading from the frame buffer vs reading from a camera isn't really going to be that much different for an AI, but at least you'd have the same physical latency from mechanical devices to contend with.

 

[Brian_B]

I'm more interested if they finally managed to make a realistic clutch.

That -- would be awesome.

 

[MadMummy76]

Depends on how it's implemented -- if you have it reading directly from the system RAM, yeah, you are right. But you could also implement and AI that uses a camera to watch the screen, and actuators to push the same buttons on the same control scheme that a player would. It probably wouldn't be all that much different, to be honest, as reading from the frame buffer vs reading from a camera isn't really going to be that much different for an AI, but at least you'd have the same physical latency from mechanical devices to contend with.

Based on the video it doesn't seem to be based on the image data, but on direct fed raw game data, like position on track, wheel angle, etc, etc.

If they'd have managed to create an AI that can interpret the image it could also be used to drive cars in real life.