The ability of autistic people to understand the subjective viewpoints of others is drastically impaired.

To illustrate, an autistic child is shown a model in which person A puts an object away in front of person B, then leaves the room. Person B then takes the object and conceals it in a different location, then person A re-enters. If told that person A wants the object back and asked to show where he will go first to get it, an autistic child will likely point straight to the hiding place used by person B.

Asperger’s syndrome is a less severe part of the spectrum, in which people generally show some form of above normal mental ability coupled with somewhat obsessive interests, and are somewhat disconnected and uncomprehending of the emotions of those around them.

In its high specialization and complete inability to understand people, game AI shows very similar symptoms to people on the autism spectrum. It doesn't really have a place on the spectrum itself though, because it breaks out of the far end, being so narrowly active and empathically blind as to be beyond autistic.

The more comprehensive it gets though, the less machine like it seems and the closer it comes to behaving like a particular subset of unusual human beings. Advanced AI will probably follow a reverse trajectory down the autism spectrum before it really fools us.