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Google Tech Talks
May, 14 2008

ABSTRACT

Google’s own Dylan Casey will be speaking about his experience riding the TdF with the Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Team.

Check out http://www.dylancasey.com/ for more info about Dylan.

Speaker: Dylan Casey
Dylan Casey maybe best known for his prowess on the road these days, but he’s also quite accomplished on the track. In 1998, Casey became just the third U.S. cyclist in history to win national championships in both disciplines, winning the time trial event in the National Road Championships and the pursuit event at the National Track Championships.

In 2000, Casey became an Olympian when he competed in the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. The year before he won a gold medal in individual pursuit at the 1999 Pan Am Games.

Casey has stage wins from the 1997 Tour of Ohio and 89er Stage Race and the 1998 Tour of Tucson, which he also won overall. In 1999, Casey came in third overall at the Tour of Holland, sixth at the First Union Invitational and competed at the Tour of Spain. Stage wins in 2000 included one each at the Redlands Classic, the Tour of Luxembourg, and the Four Days of Dunkerque.

Born in raised in California, Casey graduated from Las Lamas High School in Walnut Creek, CA in 1989. He then went on graduate from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a B.S. in communications information systems in 1994.

Google Tech Talks
April, 3 2008

ABSTRACT

Computer games are an increasingly popular application for Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, and conversely AI is an increasingly popular selling point for commercial games. Although games are typically associated with entertainment applications, there are many “serious” applications of gaming, including military, corporate, and advertising applications. There are also what the so called “humane” gaming applications—interactive tools for medical training, educational games, and games that reflect social consciousness or advocate for a cause. Game AI is the effort of taking computer games beyond scripted interactions, however complex, into the arena of truly interactive systems that are responsive, adaptive, and intelligent. Such systems learn about the player(s) during game play, adapt their own behaviors beyond the pre-programmed set provided by the game author, and interactively develop and provide a richer experience to the player(s).

In this brown bag, I will discuss a range of CBR approaches for Game AI. I will discuss differences and similarities between character-level AI (in embedded NPCs, for example) and game-level AI (in the drama manager or game director, for example). I will explain why the AI must reason at multiple levels, including reactive, tactical, strategic, rhetorical, and meta, and propose a CBR architecture that lets us design and coordinate real-time AIs operating asynchronously at all these levels. I will conclude with a brief discussion on the very idea of Game AI: is it feasible? realistic? and would we call it “intelligence” if we could implement all this stuff?

Speaker: Dr. Ashwin Ram
Dr. Ashwin Ram is an Associate Professor and Director of the Cognitive Computing Lab in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science, and an Adjunct Professor in Psychology at Georgia Tech and in MathCS at Emory University. He received his PhD from Yale University in 1989, his MS from University of Illinois in 1984, and his BTech from IIT Delhi in 1982. He has published 2 books and over 100 scientific articles in international forums. He is a founder of Enkia Corporation which provides AI software for information assurance and decision support.

Google Tech Talks
June 6, 2008

ABSTRACT

Tim, Founder of the Thousand Parsec project, will explore the universe of Free and Open Source computer games, drawing on his personal experience as a case study for successfully building and contributing
to an Open Source game project. Many areas will be covered including many which are of interest to people who don’t normally play games! Discover the variety and creativity of some existing FOSS games, learn
about how commercial games are using FOSS and finally, *how to start your own game project*.

Speaker: Tim Ansell
Tim Ansell has given talks about FOSS gaming at a number of conferences and organised the Gaming Miniconf at Linux.conf.au 2007 and 2008.

Tim is an avid FOSS game developer, founding the Thousand Parsec project 7 years ago in 2001. Originally getting involved in FOSS development via a game project called WorldForge, he now believes that games are a very important part of the FOSS ecosystem.

More info at http://blog.mithis.net/archives/games/82-techtalk-gamingforfreedom

Slides available at http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://blog.mithis.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/techtalk6-pdfable.pdf