[HN Gopher] Sony's racing AI destroyed its human competitors by ...
___________________________________________________________________
Sony's racing AI destroyed its human competitors by being nice (and
fast)
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-07-20 08:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| t_mann wrote:
| Reminds me of a question I've always had about game AIs: suppose
| you have a really good one (like this one, or in chess eg), how
| do you make the easier difficulty levels? Just throwing random
| noise into the decisions would probably lead to non-enjoyable
| outcomes. Is there a structured approach to it?
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- if you watch the video - it looks like it just has a
| considerably better grasp of the physics engine at a fundamental
| level - she mentions at the end that the AI knew when to break
| into a corner - when to push out - in some instances she wasn't
| breaking hard into the corner - then pushing out fast --
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZbA_CDoWrk&ab_channel=GRANT...
| Someone wrote:
| FTA: _For now, Sony is sticking to games. It plans to put GT
| Sophy in a future version of Gran Turismo. "We'd like this to
| become part of the product," says Peter Stone, executive director
| of Sony AI America. "Sony's an entertainment company, and we want
| this to make the game more entertaining."_
|
| Also FTA: "You don't want to do that because you'll make a
| mistake. It's like a controlled crash," she says. "I could maybe
| do that one in a hundred times."*
|
| I don't see how a computer racer that destroys human competition
| would make the game more entertaining, I guess there's work to do
| there to not make the AI reliably pull of highly risky moves.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > I don't see how a computer racer that destroys human
| competition would make the game more entertaining, I guess
| there's work to do there to not make the AI reliably pull of
| highly risky moves.
|
| Well, if we left things to non-Human racing we'd soon realize
| we're severally out matched with enough data and an unlimited
| engineering budget: Adrian Newey's X2014 launched on GT 6 and
| was the first example of this [0]. I'm not sure if it's just
| about destroying the competition making people lose interest,
| or more like breaking the 9 minute mark at the Nordschleife and
| seeing that it can be done and raising the bar.
|
| I guess I can see there being some novelty in that, but I'd get
| tired of it personally since I've suspected and always kind of
| knew this time would eventually come.
|
| I'm convinced at this point we can build a Formula E car with
| enough on track data to break lap records that can never be
| achieved by Humans in any of the previous F1 iterations; it's
| the same when even the best fighter pilots cannot withstand
| certain g forces that allow drones/unmanned pilots to make
| aerial feats that would kill a Human.
|
| Striving to be 'that guy' who got closest to the AI has it's
| appeal and I'm guessing Sony think so too? If the goal is to
| sell as many copies of the game and extra DLC, proprietary
| driving setups/steering wheels, online memberships, Sony TVs,
| PS5 etc... I think this strategy makes some sense to Sony.
| People literately spent billions on Fortnight upgrades in it's
| first 2 years [1], so it stands to reason if you can get a DLC
| for a specific car/setup that makes you competitive against the
| AI it could work.
|
| 0: https://www.wired.com/2013/12/red-bull-x2014/
|
| 1: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22417447/fortnite-
| revenue-...
| Someone wrote:
| But for an electronic game, players can't discriminate
| between AIs that are incredibly good (and thus could be
| something expert players try to emulate) and AIs that cheat
| (and thus frustrate experts). In this example, I think the AI
| is close to cheating, if not doing it already. It seems to
| know awfully well how slippy the road surface is.
|
| _"This back-and-forth between GT Sophy and the game happens
| 10 times a second, which Wurman and his colleagues claim
| matches the reaction time of human players"_ already may mean
| the AI is cheating.
|
| A literal interpretation has the AI get live data every
| 100ms, and react as soon after that as it wants (given
| current CPUs, that could easily be within a ms), while humans
| act more as if they receive data from x ms ago, and react y
| ms later (with x and y in the tens of ms)
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > I think the AI is close to cheating, if not doing it
| already. It seems to know awfully well how slippy the road
| surface is.
|
| Well, I've played the endurance rounds with some friends on
| GT when we were in the off-season and rebuilding our cars
| so we pulled out our bucket seats from our cars and had the
| wheel and peddle setup to have a laugh: these are the kind
| of races that take 3+ hours with drive swaps in between and
| have gotten close to winning on completely worn tires only
| to then be clipped from behind from a lapped AI car and
| lose it all a couple of laps away from checkered flag.
|
| It's frustrating, but we tried again that day and got the
| award and I think Sony knew that it's loyal customer base
| always would, which is why it's moving in this direction
| without even hiding what it's doing.
|
| If you want pure racing simulators without all the fluff,
| perhaps iracing is exclusively where you'll have to go for
| that now.
|
| I'm not exactly sure what to say about it now that I'm
| older with less time and patience (and perhaps jaded about
| the video game Industry as a whole) for such things or the
| fact that I study AI/ML but I see this more as a data-
| driven iterative step towards leveraging it's brand in
| order to maximize engagement Online via social media [0]
| and sales via video games new business model (DLC and other
| misc purchases) than it is about providing the 'The Real
| Driving Simulation.'
|
| Which makes the intro of GT2 (still the best in my view)
| [1] all the more ominous with it's choice of music being a
| form of Machiavellian foreshadowing and crushing poignance.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIm11cthgWU
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e701QHyCr0o
| MBCook wrote:
| > I don't see how a computer racer that destroys human
| competition would make the game more entertaining
|
| Once it knows how to race you can restrict it. Have it be less
| aggressive, artificially lower its car's power, tell it not to
| play to the edge of physics.
|
| Gran Turismo 7 is a lot of fun, but the current AI players
| might as well be on a slot car track. They practically race
| single-file taking the same lines as every other car. It's
| clearly not real.
|
| Injecting virtual Sophies, tuned in various ways, may make the
| game feel more like a real race. It would also allow you to
| provide a much tougher challenge for the top end players.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| > I don't see how a computer racer that destroys human
| competition would make the game more entertaining
|
| Indeed that looks like the racing version of aimbots.
|
| I remember a thread on HN before about AI in guys. A game
| developer said that at some point if you make enemies too
| smart, the game becomes more frustrating.
|
| "AI beats players at game X" is less often a practical advance
| (e.g. classic chess engines already beat casual/semi-serious
| players, what's the need to utterly "destroy" them, really?)
| and more often a media stunt aimed at impressing potential
| customers for more profitable uses.
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| >I don't see how a computer racer that destroys human
| competition would make the game more entertaining, I guess
| there's work to do there to not make the AI reliably pull of
| highly risky moves.
|
| Maybe not a fun challenge to race against, but a benchmark to
| check your performance. Like modern chess engines.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| so it picked the best moves on time? that's super cool. but how's
| it etiquette?
| rkangel wrote:
| One extra observation I would make on top of the sibling's
| detailed answer is why I believe iRacing is by far the best
| online racing game.
|
| iRacing has an MMR value called iRating which is used to match
| you against drivers of a similar skill level (like every online
| game) but it also has the unique concept called 'safety
| rating'. Safety rating is based on your 'incidents per corner'
| over some recent history of corners (in the 1000 to 10000
| range). Safety rating controls which official racing series
| you're allowed to enter - higher level stuff like F1 cars
| requires a better safety rating than the entry level Mazda
| MX-5.
|
| Having the need to maintain (or improve) this safety rating
| gives the 'risk' incentive to drivers which most online games
| are lacking. In real racing a desire not to put your car into a
| wall at high speed controls how dangerously people drive, but
| that risk doesn't exist online and so in a lot of games (e.g.
| the F1 games) people attempt stupid dive-bomb overtakes, take
| out their competitors and make it less fun to play. Safety
| rating puts that incentive back. It's not perfect of course,
| but it does help iRacing feel more 'real' and 'fair'.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > so it picked the best moves on time? that's super cool. but
| how's it etiquette?
|
| Having played GT since it's inception, and been involved in
| motorsports and used GT to learn a few tracks before GT Academy
| became a thing: on the track you have to have a certain degree
| of respect for your fellow riders/drivers, these are extremely
| dangerous machines capable of lots of harm from carelessness or
| even a simple mistake so being erratic makes you an extreme
| liability on track; in a game it's less so, and shunts without
| consequences don't require you to put forethought into an
| overtake on a banked/cambered turn or late breaking on an
| uneven/worn part of the track, or taking a certain line to
| prepare for another move 3 turns ahead etc... and I'm guess
| this AI has learned from this just like you would if you were
| about to make contact or potentially wreck on track which
| REALLY hurts.
|
| The thing is, the crash may not even be the most damaging thing
| that happens because fights break out after a crash as well
| since so much adrenaline is pumping through your body and
| motorsports tends to attract lots of risk taking hot-heads--
| their are exceptions. So even if you think you are above
| learning the why, you will soon learn why it's practiced one
| way or another.
|
| The etiquette component of on-track behavior is almost never
| present in online play because of that absence and it's why
| I've always had certain reservations with just assuming a
| person with sim only experience can be allowed on track with
| out some track experience before hand--sims are extremely
| useful and amazing in their feedback but it's not a full
| replacement. The Nismo GT Academy was cool because it combined
| both and made a few decent GT drivers in the process.
|
| I think it's the old adage that 'slow is smooth, smooth is fast
| and speed is the economy of motion' which has allowed many
| smoother drivers/riders who use this to excel in their field
| and dominate: Alain Prost, Jorge Lorenzo come to mind.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| ah, makes sense, thanks for sharing :)
| KuiN wrote:
| > a video game known for its super-realistic simulations of real
| vehicles and tracks
|
| Don't let the hardcore simmers read this!
| isaacfrond wrote:
| tl;dr
|
| Sony regrouped, retrained its AI, and set up a rematch in
| October. This time GT Sophy won with ease. What made the
| difference? It's true that Sony came back with a larger neural
| network, giving its program more capabilities to draw from on the
| fly. But ultimately, the difference came down to giving GT Sophy
| something that Peter Wurman, head of Sony AI America, calls
| "etiquette": the ability to balance its aggression and timidity,
| picking the most appropriate behavior for the situation at hand.
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| Thank you. I read the full article but they are always just soo
| unnecessarily long. All the interesting bits could easily be
| condensed into 5 sentences.
|
| It almost feels offensive, how it wasted my time without giving
| me equally valuable information in return.
| autoexec wrote:
| I feel the same way about radiolab pocasts. Interesting
| topics, unnecessarily drawn out and filled with obnoxious
| amounts of repetition and pointless music/audio interludes to
| the point where I'd often just rage quit, but so many people
| love it and _praise_ the production.
|
| There's certainly an audience out there that loves long-
| winded articles that meander around their topic so that you
| get the same amount of reading it would take for an in-depth
| look at a subject but still only come away with a handful of
| bullet points worth of useful information.
| azalemeth wrote:
| It also absolutely does not tell you how what is probably a
| multi-layer perceptron can implement etiquette as a neat
| little add-on...
| mrandish wrote:
| I think this is material info which needs to be noted:
|
| > GT Sophy doesn't get the same view of the game that human
| players do. Instead of reading pixels off a screen, the program
| takes in updates about the position of its car on the track and
| the positions of the cars around it. It also gets sent
| information about the virtual physical forces affecting its
| vehicle. In response, GT Sophy tells the car to turn or brake.
| This back-and-forth between GT Sophy and the game happens 10
| times a second, which Wurman and his colleagues claim matches the
| reaction time of human players.
|
| The AI is getting precise 3D position data and physics data not
| only about its car but competitors cars - from a 3D physics
| simulation. The human competitors only get a 2D visual view based
| on what a race car driver can see from the cockpit. Maybe I'm
| misunderstanding but it seems like the AI is simply deriving the
| optimal parameters encoded in the 3D physics simulation through
| iterative testing based on precise 3D physics data supplied
| directly from the simulation. The humans aren't getting the same
| data. The human drivers must visually estimate the physics
| vectors and precise 3D positions from a limited yet rapidly
| changing 2D rendering. This is quite different from what I
| initially assumed based on the headline and opening paragraphs of
| the article.
|
| Given the same precise 3D and vector data in searchable form
| along with sufficient compute power, it seems plausible a team of
| human statisticians could work out more optimal driving
| parameters than top human drivers limited to 2D visuals in nine
| 24 hour work periods (which is what the AI required to train).
| mjburgess wrote:
| It's _always_ pseudoscience.
|
| AI models correlation(Measures(X), Measures(Y)).
|
| Marketing sells it as using a theory of how X causes Y.
|
| In this case, we want a machine to acquire a causal model of
| how its actions produce effects, by measuring X and Y itself
| under its own actions.
|
| There is no AI that does this. What we have is a machine "with
| the answers already" (ie., no need to measure) that has a
| correlative model.
| andsoitis wrote:
| That's why humans should insist on competing with AIs in _our
| world_ not _theirs_ (simulation).
|
| When it matters, the playing field will be stacked heavily
| against the human who will not have direct access to the
| informed encoded in the virtual world. Putting it differently,
| any AI in a simulation is in some sense indistinguishable from
| the simulation itself (or at least, you should assume so).
| raz32dust wrote:
| It's hard to draw the boundary. We could say that AI should
| only be given access to exactly the same information that
| humans have access to. But AI will have magnitudes more
| memory and compute resources. So for example, an AI could
| only have the 2D view but it could store, access and process
| the 2D view in ways a human cannot.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > We could say that AI should only be given access to
| exactly the same information that humans have access to.
|
| I believe that it would be naive to believe the owner of
| the AI (whether a person, and organization, or another AI)
| would play by those rules. Better to assume an adversarial
| game board.
|
| One approach would be to simply _not_ compete against an AI
| even in _our_ world. Another would be be to be in control
| of the framing or environment where you can outplay,
| outlast the AI. Do not assume friendship because its goals
| _will_ be different from that of humans, unless you can be
| certain of mutual dependency.
|
| The game theory around human/AI coexistence extends beyond
| these quick thought bytes, maybe someone is working one a
| treatise.
| batmanthehorse wrote:
| Yes, but more memory and processing power might mean the AI
| is actually better at performing the same task. Cleaner,
| pre-processed input data is cheating in a different way.
| EricMausler wrote:
| It has to do with input data. Part of the game is
| rationalizing what is on the screen and maintaining a
| memory or prediction of offscreen activity. When they get
| direct feeds to game data, it's cheating.
|
| The AI should be given a game screen. I think it should
| also need to actually use a mouse and keyboard too if im
| being honest.
|
| I would be way better at games if I only need to think
| about what I want to do in the game and have it done rather
| than use some method of physical controls to do so
| nomel wrote:
| > with AIs in our world not theirs
|
| The benefit of keeping things in "their world" is that "our
| world" requires massive investment in sensors, while the
| exact same algorithms would be used. Letting them play in
| their world means you can focus on the algorithms. But, I
| agree that it should be fair. Putting a human in front of a
| screen with a steering wheel is in no way comparable to the
| sensory experience of being in a car. I'm fine around a race
| track, but racing simulators are nearly impossible for me.
| RajT88 wrote:
| It caught my eye as well.
|
| If you imagine a real car, this is the sort of detailed sensor
| data you would get from it. The sensor data in the game is
| never wrong though, as it comes direct from memory.
|
| The other thing which caught my eye was this:
|
| > For example, GT Sophy often drops a wheel onto the grass at
| the edge of the track and then skids into turns.
|
| This works consistently because (again) it's not the real world
| where the grass has subtle variations.
|
| It would be very interesting indeed to see such an AI compete
| on a real track, but it may not be as clear cut a victory when
| the very finely tuned senses of a human racing driver are in
| play.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > It would be very interesting indeed to see such an AI
| compete on a real track, but it may not be as clear cut a
| victory when the very finely tuned senses of a human racing
| driver are in play.
|
| Roborace[0][1] was an attempt at an all-AI racing series that
| would be run parallel to Formula E (the all-electric single-
| seater racing series); however, while they did get to the
| point that they could run cars on track, they never got to
| the point where they could run those cars in competition. It
| seems to be defunct, having been renamed "Arrival R" after
| the core technologies were purchased by one of the teams that
| had intended to enter the series.[2]
|
| 0: https://roborace.com
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roborace
|
| 2: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/business-
| tech%2C-developm...
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Fundamentally, despite the claims, Gran Turismo isn't a very
| good driving physics simulator.
| cdkmoose wrote:
| F1 drivers do the same thing through a chicane or wide on a
| curve to maintain speed, leaving the smoothest road surface
| for that advantage (not the skidding).
| t0mas88 wrote:
| That's about taking a different line. Drivers will start as
| far out on the kerb as possible to make the overall turn
| less tight, allowing them to take that turn at a higher
| speed.
|
| What this AI was doing is something that only works in sim-
| racing. It's done by humans sometimes in iRacing. Drop a
| wheel on the grass to make use of the fact that the sim
| will cause a consistent rotation (yaw) from it. Which can
| help turn a car into a corner.
|
| It can't be done in reality, because the effect on the car
| isn't predictable on a real race track.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > It can't be done in reality, because the effect on the
| car isn't predictable on a real race track.
|
| Maybe a driver could work it out in training for a single
| race and in a certain corner but the cost of getting it
| wrong is not only not finishing the race but also having
| a race car in the barrier, so a damaged car.
|
| On a race track, drivers usually know characteristics of
| every corner for selected weather conditions. For
| example: at the Nordschleife, exit of Foxhole into
| Adenauer Forst is safe to cut in the dry but a no no in
| the wet, unless you're in a GT3 class car with enough
| downforce.
|
| It is the same with kerbs, stay out of then when it is
| wet, use them in the dry. But it's all touch and go when
| the conditions change and sometimes that leads to a
| crash.
| richiezc wrote:
| >> For example, GT Sophy often drops a wheel onto the grass
| at the edge of the track and then skids into turns.
|
| > This works consistently because (again) it's not the real
| world where the grass has subtle variations.
|
| Well I mean maybe they just trained it on Initial D anime,
| Sony is a Japanese company after all
| kernal wrote:
| >The AI is getting precise 3D position data and physics data
| not only about its car but competitors cars
|
| GT Sophy is receiving the position of its competitors (which is
| rhetorical statement because of course it needs to know their
| position), but where does it say that it's receiving the
| physics data of its competitors? It does mention that it does
| receive 'the information about the virtual physical forces
| affecting its vehicle', but only the forces affecting its
| vehicle and not the forces affecting the other vehicles (which,
| IMO, would be irrelevant and, quite possibly, impossible to
| process given the number of cars on track and the limits of its
| game loop processing time).
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Kind of a straw man though. Any real-world simulator is going
| to need perception and then decision systems. They are mostly
| two separate problems. Certainly, the decision system will need
| to be adapted to deal with momentarily incorrect or absent
| data, but for the most part will remain unchanged. Perception
| (telemetry really) on a closed-circuit race track is far more
| achievable than on city streets. So hats off to Sony for
| working on the decision system aspect. Would love to see it
| paired with perception system and put on the track.
|
| Ultimately it has no impact on professional sport at all. I
| watch motor racing entirely because of the humans. It is
| triumph and tragedy.
|
| But as a nerd, I love seeing "AI" beat us humans. It is
| supposed to.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| "This AI is amazing and destroys humans!"
|
| I have about 25 years in the games industry and have worked on a
| variety of racing games. The "AI" could literally be replaced by
| any technique we developed for solving this very problem in the
| last 30 years that has access to the underlying game data, e.g.
| the physics models and vehicle positions. Until the AI has the
| same information as the player, it is not an equivalent AI. It is
| simply a very clever aimbot. Any of the classical techniques
| would also pretty much destroy any human player too, those
| techniques are usually turned down from 11 to give each of them a
| personality or make it realistic for the human to win.
|
| This is no different to an RTS "AI" bot destroying a human
| because it can mash a virtual key a thousand times a second and
| has complete information on the entire map and all units and all
| orders issued and can even see through the fog of war.
|
| I congratulate the team for what they have achieved, but this is
| more marketing fluff than meat.
|
| My bonafides as to why I hold this opinion on this subject: About
| 25 years in the games industry as a systems
| (graphics/engine/gameplay) programmer that has worked on many
| triple-A games and about 20 years in AI/robotics/machine learning
| with a MSc CompSci and an MSc in applied AI.
| t_mann wrote:
| How do you do the turning down? Just curious, doesn't seem like
| there's an obvious way that's also guaranteed to be fun.
| EGreg wrote:
| "I don't think we've learned general principles yet about how to
| deal with human norms that you have to respect,"
|
| That's only in phase 1.
|
| Afterwards when humans are outnumbered by vast bot swarms, and
| all their content and capital is vanishingly tiny, these norms
| won't matter. Also, human participation won't matter, and will
| likely be similar to the paralympics or women's tennis (but
| orders of magnitude suckier).
|
| Entertainment for a tiny niche of the market (humans performing
| for humans) will not be an economically significant space, kind
| of like classical music today or better yet renaissance music.
|
| EVERYTHING you are used to online -- including these comments -
| can already be convincingly deepfaked by adversarial networks
| trained on throwing bullshit at a wall and seeing what sticks.
| And this bullshit can actually be a superstimulus that
| outperforms genuine human interaction. What is missing is
| decentralized botnets swarming at scale to gradually and
| unrelentingly amass karma points across the swarm, and use them
| to move sentiment, markets etc. but that's coming. Afterwards
| it's onto subverting democratic systems with sybil attacks, as
| well as judicial systems with parallel construction and deepfake
| "evidence".
| simiones wrote:
| > EVERYTHING you are used to online -- including these comments
| - can already be convincingly deepfaked by adversarial networks
| trained on throwing bullshit at a wall and seeing what sticks.
|
| Bullshit. State of the art chatbots can barely convince one
| mystic minded guy who has no idea how they work and wants to
| believe that they are real. If you actually try to converse
| anything even slightly meaningful with one, it quickly becomes
| obvious that they have no idea what they are talking about.
|
| Sure, they can produce some basic reddit memes and such, or
| plausibly sounding word salads that resemble what some write,
| but they are a long way away from actually being convincing
| chat partners. They do slightly better at imitating copypasta
| news reporting.
| EGreg wrote:
| The point is that you don't need to converse. Most things are
| passively consumed -- articles etc. by the vast majority of
| people who come away convinced or reshare them.
|
| GPT-3 can bullshit many things convingly enough and at scale
| to make people reshare and vouch for it. Also, other chatbots
| can leave comments and reshare masquerading as real
| opinionated supporters in a "mob" and likewise barely answer
| you.
|
| Remember... it's not that you the one person who talks to
| them has to be convinced. It's that your existing forums and
| chats and platforms can be gradually infiltrated with bots
| that convince OTHERS the vast majority of whom never did a
| turing test.
|
| Think of how your opinion was formed on many political
| things, it likely happened non-interactively by just
| consuming articles and comments, and seemingly "defeated"
| arguments of OTHERS who could have all been bots.
| wsinks wrote:
| Thank you for your second post (kind of answered my other
| reply to you already)
|
| I've seen how gnarly instagram bot comments already are,
| and wondered how many people are bots vs. people on there.
| It's not economical to turing test them all, so I've had to
| assume that they're all propaganda... and even then I've
| noticed the influence on deciding what's social.
|
| How would you measure the success of this, if you were
| making them?
| wsinks wrote:
| I don't have much to add here except you've revitalized my fear
| of this situation.
|
| Any other thoughts on what the phases are?
| trention wrote:
| > and all their content and capital is vanishingly tiny
|
| Only humans are currently allowed to own capital and that's not
| going to change in the near future.
|
| >judicial systems with parallel construction and deepfake
| "evidence" (Fake or real) pictures and video are in a lot of
| circumstances not admissible evidence in court, with deepfakes
| the set of inadmissible evidence will simply expand.
|
| There is very real and very big concern about fake news and job
| loss and (in a slightly longer term) GAI going rogue but that's
| about it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-21 23:01 UTC)