Aranha thinks that a multi-agent approach, where several AIs work independently to build structures informed by their immediate surroundings, could lead to more coherent and realistic designs. That can give good overall results, but the details may be off. Techniques and approaches similar to those being deployed in the competition could one day help design real cities that are healthier and safer.įor example, Aranha has found that most entries take a top-down approach, meaning the AI city generator looks at a given area and generates a settlement to fit. But AI is already being used to analyze how cities are built. Realistic-looking game worlds are one thing. “One thing that I really like is that there are many different approaches to this challenge,” he says. He thinks it is a good way to explore and test out new AI techniques. It sinks buildings until they hit rock.Ĭlaus Aranha, who studies evolutionary computation at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, advised three entrants to the competition. This is clearly because the algorithm wants to build on solid ground, says Salge. In one settlement, some of the houses are buried up to their eaves in sand. But it was less successful on a small island, which it paved over completely.Įven the winning entries still make silly mistakes. This tactic worked well on flat, open terrain, where it produced striking Japanese-style temple complexes.
Another was good at leveling the landscape and laying down plazas. “But it is really difficult for an AI.” Levelling the landįor example, one entrant started by identifying the type of environment-desert or forest, say-and then generated buildings that looked as if they had been built out of common local materials.
These judges score the AI city planners in four areas: how well they adapt their designs to specific locations how well the layouts work, according to criteria such as whether there are bridges and roads between different areas how appealing they are aesthetically and how much the designs evoke a narrative-are there details that tell a story about how a town came to be, such as a ruin or a pit from which building materials might have been mined? “Making a Minecraft village for an unseen map is something a 10-year-old human could do,” says Salge. To win, they must impress eight human judges from a range of backgrounds, including architects, archaeologists, and game designers. The open-endedness of the challenge means that AIs need to master multiple objectives.
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