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Microsoft Researchers Are Trying to Teach AI to Play Minecraft

AIX is a platform, which allows researchers to convert Minecraft into an AI’s digital playpen.
Image: Microsoft

Microsoft researchers have released a new tool to develop artificial intelligence: a platform based in construction game Minecraft.

In an Arxiv paper published Monday, five Microsoft computer scientists describe developing AIX, a platform which allows the team to use Minecraft as a digital testing ground for improving the capabilities of AI. In a nutshell, the team is using the lego-brick-style world's complex surroundings to try and teach a Minecraft character to do what sounds relatively simple: climb up a high virtual hill.

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The challenge, however, is that the AI agent is a bit of a tabula rasa—to begin with it knows nothing about its environment. It will eventually acquire more knowledge through a process of trial and error as it learns to navigate some of Minecraft's more hostile environments, such as lava pits, and distinguish between night and day.

"We're trying to program it to learn, as opposed to programming it to accomplish specific tasks," said Fernando Diaz, a senior researcher at the Microsoft New York Lab, in a blog post.

Over recent years, AI has become adept at performing specific, complex tasks, such as sifting through and recognizing images or understanding and translating speech. But it still struggles with what humans excel at—making decisions based on absorbing and evaluating a medley of audio-visual, sensory, and tactile cues from the environment.

We can't apply this innately human capacity to AI yet, as, according to Hofmann, there's still not enough research on how humans process all the sensory cues they're surrounded by. "We don't understand ourselves well enough," she said.

Researchers want to use Minecraft to improve AI. Image: Microsoft

Researchers are hoping that Minecraft's "digital playpen" can at least offer them a low-cost sandbox where they can teach the artificial intelligence agent to deal with complex decisions and consequences. The virtual environment offers distinct advantages over a physical one. If, for example, you lose an AI character to a lava pit, you can just recreate a new one. This wouldn't be possible with physical robots, where high costs would impede researchers from quickly reproducing another alternative.

"Minecraft is the perfect platform for this kind of research because it's this very open world," said Katja Hofmann, a Microsoft researcher and project collaborator. "You can do survival mode, you can do 'build battles' with your friends, you can do courses, you can implement your own games. This is really exciting for artificial intelligence because it allows us to create games that stretch beyond current abilities."

At present, the AIX platform is only available under a private beta to a select group of academic researchers. Come summer, AIX will be available to a broader academic and amateur audience via an open-source license. Users will be able to program their AI agents in their programming language of choice.

"We're looking for opportunities where we can really help accelerate the pace of artificial intelligence innovation in a way that is going to be very close the real world, with real experiences, and real data," said Evelyne Viegas, the director of artificial intelligence outreach at Microsoft Research.

With its endless options and ability to be reconfigured into multiple environments, Minecraft's technicolor lego-brick world might just hold the ticket to training up our AIs of the future.