AiAi is named ironically for the three toed sloth.
The name “ai”, “ai ai”, or even “ai ai ai” is apparently a phonetic rendition of the noise the sloth makes so something like this:
I usually pronounce it “aye aye”, though 🙂
Why? Two reasons:
(1) Most game playing engines are based on GDL (Stanford Game Description Language) which allows you to describe any game in a very abstract form, leading to very slow and inefficient implementations – by contrast I wanted my framework to be as fast as possible while still being able to implement any game; so… irony and/or a personal challenge.
(2) It’s also common to refer to the search space as a tree, and I liked the idea of a sloth hanging from a tree as a logo. My artistic skills aren’t very good at all, but you can just about see a sloth hanging from a branch in the Ai Ai icon 🙂
I also considered “MyAI” – a pun on the go term miai – at the time; but it sounds a little too egotistical to my ears.