[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-ai-agents-that-take-direction-mid-game":10,"sections":34},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":29,"feedback":33,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":33,"total_tokens":33},3197,"ai-agents-that-take-direction-mid-game","AI Agents That Take Direction Mid-Game","A new research framework lets players coach AI agents in real time, tested in Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo.","Researchers have built a framework that lets users steer how an AI agent behaves — not just what it achieves — while a task is already running.\n\nThe system combines a technique called universal value function approximators with curated training scenarios, learning algorithms, and data augmentation. The result is an AI that can absorb style instructions at run time — think \"drive more aggressively\" or \"fight defensively\" — without abandoning its core objective. The team tested this in two commercial AAA titles, Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo, as well as an open-source humanoid locomotion environment. Across car racing, stylized combat, and bipedal walking, agents held to the requested style while still completing the underlying task.\n\nMost reinforcement learning research chases a single near-optimal policy and calls it done. This work treats behavioral style as a first-class variable, which matters for any application where a human needs ongoing influence over an AI's decisions — games, robotics, or assistive systems where one-size-fits-all behavior is a liability rather than an asset. The AAA game validation is notable: these are complex, commercially shipped environments, not toy benchmarks.\n\nThe paper arrives as game studios and robotics labs race to make AI feel less like a vending machine and more like a collaborator — though shipping this kind of run-time coaching in a consumer product remains a different challenge than demonstrating it in a lab paper.","[\"ai\",\"gaming\",\"reinforcement-learning\",\"robotics\"]","2026-07-02T04:00:00.000Z","2026-07-02T04:19:52.956Z","2026-07-02T04:19:55.850Z","published",null,[],"ai",[24,26,27,28],"gaming","reinforcement-learning","robotics",[30],{"name":31,"url":32},"arXiv cs.AI","https:\u002F\u002Farxiv.org\u002Fabs\u002F2607.00642",0,{"sections":35},[36,40,45,50,55,60,65,70,75,80,84,88,93,98],{"name":37,"slug":24,"count":38,"latest_published_at":39},"AI",2590,"2026-07-16T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":41,"slug":42,"count":43,"latest_published_at":44},"Security","security",294,"2026-07-15T19:59:48.000Z",{"name":46,"slug":47,"count":48,"latest_published_at":49},"Deals","deals",179,"2026-06-29T20:02:07.000Z",{"name":51,"slug":52,"count":53,"latest_published_at":54},"Policy","policy",158,"2026-07-16T00:02:48.000Z",{"name":56,"slug":57,"count":58,"latest_published_at":59},"Hardware","hardware",122,"2026-07-14T19:46:26.000Z",{"name":61,"slug":62,"count":63,"latest_published_at":64},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",93,"2026-07-13T13:20:48.000Z",{"name":66,"slug":67,"count":68,"latest_published_at":69},"Software","software",70,"2026-07-13T19:52:25.000Z",{"name":71,"slug":72,"count":73,"latest_published_at":74},"Science","science",66,"2026-07-10T10:29:37.000Z",{"name":76,"slug":77,"count":78,"latest_published_at":79},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",59,"2026-07-07T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":81,"slug":26,"count":82,"latest_published_at":83},"Gaming",41,"2026-07-09T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":85,"slug":86,"count":82,"latest_published_at":87},"Startups","startups","2026-06-29T20:55:50.000Z",{"name":89,"slug":90,"count":91,"latest_published_at":92},"General","general",29,"2026-07-10T22:28:58.000Z",{"name":94,"slug":95,"count":96,"latest_published_at":97},"Reviews","reviews",20,"2026-06-24T12:00:01.000Z",{"name":99,"slug":100,"count":101,"latest_published_at":102},"How-To","how-to",6,"2026-06-16T09:00:00.000Z"]