Minecraft has already taken over gaming and Youtube, and will soon provide the launch pad from which our future robot overlords will take over the world itself.
The BBC reports that Microsoft will soon release an open source add-on for the ever-popular block builder that will allow scientists, researchers, and amateurs to develop AI software through the game.
The software, called AIX, will allow a separately coded AI program to interact with the game world, learning through trial and error what to do and how to progress. Why Minecraft? The software’s lead engineer, Matthew Johnson, says “It allows you to have ‘embodied AI.’ So, rather than have a situation where the AI sees an avatar of itself, it can actually be inside, looking out through the eyes of something that is living in the world.”
Whether or not this will be a major gain for artificial intelligence research remains to be seen, but it should at least help our Minecraft-obsessed youth to get interested in the field.
