The research team is using Minecraft to experiment with ways to teach an artificial intelligence agent how to perform simple tasks within the simulated environment, according to Microsoft. “We’re trying to program it to learn, as opposed to programming it to accomplish specific tasks,” said Fernando Diaz, a senior researcher in Microsoft's New York research lab and one of the people working on the project, in a blog post.
The Perfect Platform for AI
The research is being powered by AIX, a new platform designed by researchers at Microsoft’s lab in Cambridge in the U.K. The platform will allow other computer scientists from around the world to use Minecraft to test their own AI hypotheses. At the moment, AIX is restricted to a small group of academic researchers who are helping to beta test it. However, Microsoft said it plans to open it up this summer via an open source license.
Even though Minecraft is thought of as a video game, it is actually an ideal laboratory for artificial intelligence research, the researchers said. That’s because unlike other computer games, Minecraft offers endless possibilities, ranging from simple tasks like walking around looking for treasure to complex tasks like building a structure with a group of teammates.
“Minecraft is the perfect platform for this kind of research because it’s this very open world,” said Katja Hofmann, one of the researchers who designed the platform, in the blog post. “You can do survival mode, you can do ‘build battles’ with your friends, you can do courses, you can implement our own games. This is really exciting for artificial intelligence because it allows us to create games that stretch beyond current abilities.”
A Digital Playpen for Young AI
The announcement comes only days after a Google AI named AlphaGo racked up three victories in a row against world Go champion Lee Se-dol, a task once thought to be impossible for artificial intelligence. Then again, many experts thought it was impossible for a computer to beat a human player at chess until IBM's Deep Blue took out Garry Kasparov in 1997.
Nevertheless, for all its success at mastering games with a finite set of relatively simple rules, AI has still had a difficult time cracking the code behind general intelligence, the complex, nuanced ways humans learn from their mistakes. In many ways, a human infant is still vastly superior to even the most advanced computer when it comes to the ability to learn.
That’s part of what makes the Minecraft environment so appealing, researchers said. “It’s a digital playpen for artificial intelligence,” Diaz said. “It’s an environment in which we can develop an algorithm for teaching a young artificial intelligence to learn different concepts in the world.”
Resource: http://www.toptechnews.com/
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