EA Announces 'Tank Wars' Student AI Competition:

The concept is simple: in a 100m x 100m world, two tanks are locked in an arena where only one will survive. The challenge is to program the tank which will exit victorious.

John Buchanan, University Research Liaison Dude at EA commented: "Over the next five to 10 years, A.I. is going to differentiate great games from the rest. With this competition, we hope to find people with a passion for A.I and understanding of the magic that makes a game truly fun to play."

(OK, so first of all: University Research Liaison Dude? That's the guy's title? Sounds serious.)

And yes, AI is going to be big. But you know, somehow I don't think it will be the AI for tanks shooting the crap out of each other that will, as they say, make people cry. I think this competition is symptomatic of the real challenge: finding out how to use AI. And that's a design question.

And since I'm posting links from Robin's blog: here's a comment by Kim Pallister on Neil Young's 'Making People Cry' speech (which he apparently gives once a week).