Can computer game characters (or "bots") become as smart as humans, or even smarter? Can we make a game bot that you can't distinguish from your best friend? And can we create games that reinvent themselves to suit you better as you play them?

This week, leading researchers from all over the world will convene at the IT University of Copenhagen and try to answer these questions - at the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, the preeminent international conference on artificial intelligence and games.

-We will have leading figures from all over the world here, including Steve Rabin from Nintendo and Alex Champandard from AiGameDev.com. Together with leading academics like Michael Mateas and Simon Lucas, this will provide for a very fertile mix of different ideas. Who knows, maybe the ideas leading to the next generation of game AI will be developed at this conference? says Georgios Yannakakis, Associate Professor at the IT University and co-organizer of the conference.

Among the research findings that will be presented are new techniques for playing strategy games such as StarCraft based on automatically analyzing the playing style of Korean master players. Some findings, such as how to best drive cars in racing games using small-scale brain simulations trained with simulated evolution, are expected to have ramifications far outside the world of computer games.

-Many problems found in computer games are very similar in cognitive requirements to real-world problems, and so research on how to best play a game can translate to new results in engineering or psychology. For example, an artificial intelligence that can drive a car in a racing game could also be useful for driving cars in the real world, says Julian Togelius, Assistant Professor at the IT University and co-organizer of the conference.

Competition with 7000 Dollar prize
In addition to the talks and panel discussions, a number of competitions will be held. One of them, the 2k Botprize, lets human players play against both fellow humans and AI bots. The AI bots are submitted by researchers from all over the world, and try to behave as human-like as possible. The winner, who will be awarded 7000 Australian Dollars by the game development company 2k, is the bot that best convinces the human judges that it's human.

-What's at issue here is whether a computer can behave with such apparent sense and intelligence that people will mistake it for a human. Such ability would be a great advantage both to computer games, but also to robotics and web technologies, says Georgios Yannakakis.

Another competition is about automatic generation of levels for the classic platform game Super Mario Bros. The artificial intelligence programs compete to create fun levels for individual players, based on their playing styles.

-I guess 95% of Danish people under 40 have played Super Mario Bros at least once in their life, so it's great to work with such a well-known game. But people are very different - some are much better players than others, and people focus on different things when they play. This is why it is so important to have the game adapt to the way you play. This is an emerging and very fascinating research area, says Julian Togelius.

You can read more about the conference at http://game.itu.dk/cig2010/ . If you are not physically present the conference can be followed via live streaming at http://www.livestream.com/itview .

About The IT University
The youngest university in Denmark, The IT University has existed since 1999. There are approximately 1.500 students and 270 staff and the university offers a wide range of educations within the field of it.

Further info
Associate professor Georgios Yannakakis, yannakakis@itu.dk , 72 18 50 78
Mikkel Svane-Petersen, Press Officer, 2555 0447