I am sure you were as amazed and freaked out as everyone more or less when recently Google’s AlphaGo won at Go against the world champion Lee Se-dol (more than once, I have to point out!). This is the first time when an algorithm designed to mimic the human mind did manage to actually learn by experience – it didn’t win because that was a set program with a limited number of options. It won by learning whilst playing the games itself. Now Microsoft are on the path to take that even further. And you are probably asking yourself now what on earth does that have to do with gaming. I will explain.
Apparently, they have put a team together that is developing an AI, who is playing Minecraft (yep, you read it right) in order to train as a character. It is set to adapt and develop by the trial-error method. The idea is again, similar as with AlphaGo – surely they could’ve just programmed it to win but the point is to learn the process as opposed to completing a specific task.
Why Minecraft? Well, on top of being the favourite game of nerds like you and me, it is actually a very good platform to test AI systems. Just think about it – you don’t need to build a real robot at huge cost (not to mention repairing it every time something goes wrong). What is important in this case is collecting information from the experience of interacting with its surroundings – so a computer game is just perfect for that. Genius! Also, as you know, Minecraft has different modes and ways to set up things so the scientists (damn, that’s scientists! I wish I could have their job!) can create whatever obstacles or environment necessary in order for the “robot” to learn the required task. I don’t even know anymore whether I should’ve put “learn” in speech marks in this case. But yes, point being, it is easy to manipulate the level of difficulty of the tasks and increase it according to the performance of the AI.
In the core of the project lays AIX – a platform developed by Katja Hofmann and her team in Microsoft’s UK Cambridge centre. This summer, we are expecting the software to be launched open source – which is one of the most exciting things I can think of just now. Katja (eat your hearts out haters, it’s a woman in tech, yes) is aiming to have the system such that it can be used not only by Microsoft but by a wider community of AI developers worldwide. After all, working together has always been a catalyst to success, so I guess it was about time for Microsoft to get there too. Of course, there are already people opposing the idea – posts and blogs online have been released criticising the idea, saying that this is a way to develop machines more intelligent that humans. You know, Terminator and all that. Well, I am pretty optimistic by the future of it all but let’s wait and see!
That’s it from me for now, I hope you enjoyed it and will be glad to see you back soon!