WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
- Games and play help humans learn new skills, especially when we’re young, but it increasingly looks like AI’s are the superior game players
Video games are one of the best ways to train Artificial Intelligence (AI) – they offer risk free digital environments for learning machines to learn and make mistakes, but once AI gets good, it can be unstoppable.
Maluuba, a company that was recently bought by Microsoft, just let loose a learning AI on Ms. Pac Man and eventually it got the highest score possible, 999,990, which, as far as anyone can tell, is the first time anyone, or anything for that matter has aced the game.
You puny human, get out of the office and get back to playing games! Save humanity’s dignity!
Ms. Pac Man, seen here on the Atari 2600, has many variables inside it – there are the dots, of course, and the ghosts tracking the player down. Then there are the ghosts you track down and the pieces of fruit that suddenly appear. The Maluuba team broke these variables down into several agents, 150, to be exact, so the AI could focus on several small tasks as opposed to one large one.
Considering how AI’s have also mastered a mixture of other Atari games, as well as the ancient game of Go, Poker and even pig wrangling, which apparently helps them become better negotiators, they could all probably get together for a heck of a gaming night. That said though Minecraft has proven to be more of a struggle… ha ha stupid AI’s.