Video game Urban Resolve, developed by a division of the U.S. Department of Defense, is a combat simulation in which two teams of soldiers have to fight against one another to gain control over a city under siege.
The game can reproduce the behaviour of nearly 1 million entities — soldiers, civilians, cars, tanks, etc — that might exist on a conflict. And concepts borrowed from artificial intelligence research allow many of the characters to make their own decisions without human input.

Military leaders could use Urban Resolve to, say, predict what would happen if they destroyed the electricity source in a city: would it prevent the rebels from communicating with one another or it could backfire and harm hundreds or thousands of civilians?

It also gives the army a chance to peek into the future by introducing weapons and tools that don’t yet exist into current battle scenarios.

Via Wired.