AI Masters Minecraft: DeepMind Program Finds Diamonds Without Being Taught

An AI system has for the first time figured out how to collect diamonds in the hugely popular video game Minecraft -- a difficult task requiring multiple steps -- without being shown how to play. Its creators say the system, called Dreamer, is a step towards machines that can generalize knowledge learned in one domain to new situations, a major goal of AI. From a report: 'Dreamer marks a significant step towards general AI systems,' says Danijar Hafner, a computer scientist at Google DeepMind in San Francisco, California. 'It allows AI to understand its physical environment and also to self-improve over time, without a human having to tell it exactly what to do.' Hafner and his colleagues describe Dreamer in a study in Nature published on 2 April.

In Minecraft, players explore a virtual 3D world containing a variety of terrains, including forests, mountains, deserts and swamps. Players use the world's resources to create objects, such as chests, fences and swords -- and collect items, among the most prized of which are diamonds. Importantly, says Hafner, no two experiences are the same. Every time you play Minecraft, it's a new, randomly generated world,' he says. This makes it useful for challenging an AI system that researchers want to be able to generalize from one situation to the next. 'You have to really understand what's in front of you; you can't just memorize a specific strategy,' he says.

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