Herself’s Artificial Intelligence

Game developers are right up there with the government on the progress and contributions they have made to AI. The game environment is an easier one to work in because the gamers can control the environment and deal with specific issues rather than dealing with the real world. Also, there is lots of money to buy cool equipment and get top notch people involved. Huge progress has been made in 2D and 3D graphics, search algorithms, data mining and bots in the game field.

Most of the game playing design in artificial intelligence is the search for quick, intelligent search routines. Game programs are concerned with reasoning about actions. Not only must the path of possible moves be sought but the program must consider the opponents moves which are unknown to the program until they are made.

Some History
The 1950s brought us a checkers playing program by Arthur Samuel. It got good enough to beat its creator at checkers.

The 1970s brought us a backgammon program from Carnegie Mellon. This program played well enough to beat Luigi Villa, who was the top backgammon player at the time.

More information:
Beyond the bits: Artificial Intelligence Part #1
AI Programming in Games ( Introductory Material )

See also:
Game intelligence predicts your future moves
Use virtual simulations to predict human behavior
Predicting how humans behave
AI solves checkers
AI learns to play 20 questions
Testing the limits of AI in games
Poker AI vs human