Games Built AI Before AI Rebuilt Games

Video games have long served as a proving ground for AI, pioneering technologies like GPUs and reinforcement learning. Electronic Arts' Chief Strategy Officer, Mihir Vaidya, argues that the next frontier is not simply handing everything to generative AI, but creating neuro-symbolic architectures that combine generative emergence with deterministic control. The challenge in gaming is that AI must operate within a complex, real-time simulation that responds to players 60 times per second, requiring reliability that current generative models lack. Vaidya outlines AI's impact in three stages: efficiency in production, expansion of in-game possibilities, and the long-term transformation into new forms of entertainment.