AI can play Minecraft like a human – only had to watch 70,000 hours on YouTube

A team has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) that can play Minecraft independently. But the road to get there was long.

Artificial intelligence plays a big role these days. For example, a large MMO company explained how AI could improve the gaming experience. Artificial intelligence should master matchmaking better than any human.

But AI should not only improve the game itself, but should also be able to gamble itself. At least that’s what one company had set itself as an order. At the end of this experiment there is an AI that can actually play Minecraft without any problems.

Company teaches artificial intelligence how to play Minecraft

Who is behind this? OpenAI is a company dedicated to researching artificial intelligence. Now the company has set itself a unique task: They wanted to find out whether an artificial intelligence can play Minecraft (via openai.com)

What exactly was done? A special method was used for this, namely Video PreTraining (VPT). The AI ​​learns its actions and procedures from watching videos. For this reason, the developers had also recorded keystrokes and mouse movements or actions in the inventory.

Minecraft was chosen because it is one of the most played games and because there is a lot of video material on YouTube and other sites that is freely available. A total of 70,000 hours of video material was taken to train the AI. And quite successfully.

The AI ​​also does not use a special version of Minecraft. Instead, it uses the normal version, which is usually played with a mouse and keyboard.

You can see the entire experiment and the activities of the AI ​​in one Videos on Vimeo look at. We have embedded the video here for you:

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What can artificial intelligence do? The AI ​​can easily do many things in Minecraft alone:

• Cut down trees and make planks
• Build a workbench for crafting
• To swim
• hunt animals
• take food
• Place blocks under you and jump higher and higher on a column

However, the developers also explained that the AI ​​could be constantly improved the more accurate the data was on offer. Eventually, the AI ​​could make tools out of wood and stone, and build simple shelters. She explored villages, looted chests, and did it like any player would.

But some experiments with AI are rather frightening. A group of researchers wanted to prove that artificial intelligence can also be dangerous. The AI ​​had designed thousands of chemical weapons in just a few hours:

Researchers want to prove what an evil AI can do – It designs 40,000 chemical weapons in 6 hours