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Neural networks overtake humans in Gran Turismo racing game

Driving a racing car requires a tremendous amount of skill. Now, artificial intelligence has challenged the idea that this skill is exclusive to humans — and it might even change the way automated vehicles are designed.
  1. J. Christian Gerdes

    1. J. Christian Gerdes is in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

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A modern Formula 1 race is a breathtaking display of engineering precision. Yet the popularity of the sport arguably has less to do with the performance of the cars than with the skill and daring displayed by the drivers as they push those cars to the limit. Success on the race track has been a celebrated human achievement for more than a century. Will it now become a similar triumph for artificial intelligence (AI)? Writing in Nature, Wurman et al.1 take a step in this direction by introducing Gran Turismo (GT) Sophy, a neural-network driver capable of outperforming the best human players of the video game Gran Turismo.

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Nature 602, 213-214 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00304-2

References

  1. Wurman, P. R. et al. Nature 602, 223–228 (2022).

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  2. Spielberg, N. A., Brown, M., Kapania, N. R., Kegelman, J. C. & Gerdes, J. C. Sci. Robot. 4, eaaw1975 (2019).

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  3. Fujiyoshi, H., Hirakawa, T. & Yamashita, T. IATSS Res. 43, 244–252 (2019).

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Competing Interests

Kazunori Yamauchi, the director of Gran Turismo, visited the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford in 2018 to give one of our Open Garage talks. The team at Polyphony Digital gave away several copies of the game, a racing wheel and a Sony PS4, together with the talk, and left consoles and wheels at the laboratory for students to use.

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