Self-driving cars have been on the rise and have essentially hit the roads in 2016 and it seems like the way forward for mankind. Companies started developing complex frameworks and artificial intelligence in order to incorporate these cars. These algorithms developed by engineers will use textbooks and courses as a reference in order for the AI to learn how to drive cars by themselves.

© Google

However, a company called DeepDrive has now come up with a project that uses the popular crime franchise GTA V (Grand Theft Auto) as a digital proving ground for their artificial intelligence. GTA as a game has environments that are populated cities and traffic conditions that come close real-life scenarios.

© Reuters

The DeepDrive team elaborates: 

“The high fidelity and vast open world provided by GTAV also presents the most complex virtual RL environment to date for testing the sensorimotor AI. This allows a new level of testing for safety in AI as existing environments don’t offer the same opportunities for reward hacking, distributional shift, and negative side effects. Finally, developing self-driving cars out in the open provides a level of transparency not usually seen in AI applications and in an area where it is crucial to have visibility into both the safety and correctness of the system.”

I’ve spent countless amount of hours on GTA to improve my driving ‘habits’ and have always failed because the game sometimes felt too real for my liking. However, this reality in GTA might just aid researchers and engineers in developing AI that would be perfect for a self-driven car. 

Let’s hope the AI doesn’t learn how to do this: