Artificial intelligence seems poised to upend the video game business and entertainment more broadly.
On the third episode of our six-part Cerebral Valley podcast series, Max Child, James Wilsterman, and I game out how artificial intelligence could reshape the media we consume.
It helps that Max and James are the co-founders of Volley, which builds AI-enabled games. They develop many of the most popular voice games on the Amazon Alexa and smart TV platforms like Roku.
Max and James have been deep in the trenches of conversational-style gaming and have spent a lot of time thinking about how humans interact with ever smarter computers.
In the second half of the episode, I talk with Menlo Ventures partner Amy Wu, who focuses on gaming and consumer investments, and Keith Kawahata, a former executive at Wargaming, AppLovin, and Kabam, who now has a stealth artificial intelligence gaming startup.
Wu helps to articulate a three-part thesis on how artificial intelligence might change the gaming business. (1) artificial intelligence will help with the creation of the game art and graphics, (2) AI can create more sophisticated non-player characters, and (3) AI can help write the code of the game itself.