As constructed environments with clear parameters, games are an ideal proving ground for artificial intelligence research. Dr. Michael Bowling is equally passionate about games and AI. From his early days of robot soccer, to building an AI program and winning the World Championship of Poker (twice!) to his current research into theory of mind influenced by the cooperative card game Hanabi, Dr. Bowling takes a playful approach in using games to solve big, complex, challenges.

“We (as humans) can communicate a great deal by letting the background information or the inferences communicate the information...we do not have any computer algorithms that do that….(but) could a game help us get there?....We’re actually starting to make progress which is really exciting.” - Michael Bowling

Dr. Michael Bowling is a professor in Computing Science, Fellow in the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, and a senior scientist at DeepMind. His research is driven by his fascination in the problem of how computers can learn to play games through experience. He led the Computer Poker Research Group, which has built some of the best poker playing programs in the world.

AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between AI4Society, a signature research area at the University of Alberta and the Kule Institute for Advanced Research (KIAS), an endowed institute at the University of Alberta that supports research in the social sciences, humanities and fine arts.

Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AI
Technical Producer: Corey Stroeder
Special thanks to Dr. Scott Smallwood and the Sound Studies Institute at the University of Alberta for providing recording space.
Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain

Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4Society
Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell, Professor, Philosophy and Digital Humanities, Director, Kule Institute and co-Director, AI4Society
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