On the surface, Minecraft doesn’t really seem like much, but yet time and time again it has proven itself to be one of the most popular games around, where people have used the game to build entire worlds, replicas from TV shows and games, and it has even been advocated to be used as a teaching tool for kids.Turns out that’s not all as Microsoft has announced Project Malmo where Minecraft will be used as a tool to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems, as well as in machine learning and neural networks.
According to Microsoft, “Project Malmo also can be used to teach AI to do crafting – using tools and resources to build things like a table or a sword – and to learn how to get around on their own without falling down a hill or into a lava pit. They also can learn to build with blocks, navigate mazes and do any number of other tasks that mimic the types of things we might want AI to one day do in real life.”
The best part is that Microsoft has also opened up Project Malmo to the public, meaning that anyone with an interest in the project can get their hands on it and the source code for free. Also because it is essentially a Minecraft mod, anyone that can run Minecraft on their computers will have no problems using it as well.
Filed in . Read more about AI (Artificial Intelligence), Microsoft and Minecraft.