Every parent's worst nightmare is a student spending more time playing video games and surfing the web than studying for school. But the team over at OpenAI believes that a "fun parent" approach could actually bring us all one step closer to the elusive generalized intelligence. Its new tool, Universe, was created to train and measure AI frameworks with video games, applications and websites. At a high level, OpenAI, the billion-dollar side-project of Elon Musk and Sam Altman, aims to reduce the potential harms of artificial intelligence by democratizing it. Universe is being released with Atari 2600 games, 1,000 flash games and 80 browser environments with the goal of expediting the creation of generalized intelligence that can excel at more than one task.

Hoping to teach AI agents the common sense they need to solve arbitrary tasks without specific training, OpenAI on Monday will introduce Universe, a collection of virtualized video games, browser interfaces, and applications that serve as a training ground for code-based decision making. Universe is open-source middleware that supports Gym, the organization's toolkit for developing and evaluating reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. RL is used to train software perform specific actions, such as playing a videogame or making a 3D model walk, under a framework that prioritizes actions through a reward scheme. Universe aims to accelerate the education of AI agents by broadening the number of available training resources. Previously, according to OpenAI, the largest RL resource consisted of 55 Atari games, the Atari Learning Environment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is usually built into the software we use, from automatic tagging on Facebook to chatbots in Google and Apple's mobile operating systems. Instead of injecting AI into software, a new tool from OpenAI teaches algorithms to control a computer the way a human would: by looking at pixels and using a virtual keyboard and mouse. The tool, called Universe, is meant to be a one-stop shop for a popular flavor of AI research called reinforcement learning, where an AI agent tries to accomplish a task, learning from its mistakes over thousands or millions of iterations. With it, researchers could teach an algorithm to theoretically master any task a human could complete on a computer, from video games to browsing the internet looking for information. Universe also acts as a standardized benchmark for AI, as it can compare human and machine performance on certain tasks.

Every parent's worst nightmare is a student spending more time playing video games and surfing the web than studying for school. But the team over at OpenAI believes that a "fun parent" approach could actually bring us all one step closer to elusive generalized intelligence. Its new tool, Universe, was created to train and measure AI frameworks with video games, applications and websites. At a high level, OpenAI, the billion dollar side-project of Elon Musk and Sam Altman, aims to reduce the potential harms of artificial intelligence by democratizing it. Universe is being released with Atari 2600 games, 1,000 flash games and 80 browser environments with the goal of expediting the creation of generalized intelligence that can excel at more than one task.

Both Google and OpenAI announced plans to open-source their deep learning code Monday. Elon Musk's OpenAI released Universe, a software platform for measuring and training an AI's general intelligence across games, websites and other applications. Google's parent Alphabet is putting its entire DeepMind Lab training environment codebase on GiftHub, making it easier for anyone to train their own AI systems. DeepMind may have defeated a world champion at the difficult game Go, but to advance its learning further, Alphabet says that AI agents require more detailed environments to help with AI research. The company is opening-sourcing DeepMind Lab to programmers that want to use it.

OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company, wants to let AIs loose in their own universe, where they can learn to play games, use apps and interact with websites. Universe is the name of OpenAI's tool for training AIs on, as it puts it, "any task a human can complete with a computer." Using a VNC (Virtual Network Computing) remote desktop, it allows the AI to control the game or app using a virtual keyboard and mouse, and to see its output by analyzing the pixels displayed on the screen. The source code for Universe posted to Github on Monday, and includes interfaces to a thousand online environments, the company said. Among them are simple browser tasks such as clicking buttons, or copying and pasting items -- but there are also more complex environments, such as the video game Grand Theft Auto V. Training AIs how best to steal cars and shoot bystanders might seem a strange direction to take, given that OpenAI's mission is to build safe AI, and that one of its goals is to enable a general-purpose robot to wield tools -- initially to perform housework.

Artificial intelligence got a big push today as both Google and OpenAI announced plans to open-source their deep learning code. Elon Musk's OpenAI released Universe, a software platform that "lets us train a single [AI] agent on any task a human can complete with a computer." At the same time, Google parent Alphabet is putting its entire DeepMind Lab training environment codebase on GitHub, helping anyone train their own AI systems. DeepMind first burrowed into the public consciousness by defeating a world champion at the notoriously difficult game Go. However, to advance deep learning further, Alphabet says that such AI "agents" require highly detailed environments to serve as laboratories for AI research.

Artificial intelligence developed by the likes of Google's DeepMind and Elon Musk's OpenAI is taught within the confines of game worlds – including navigating around mazes, dodging deadly cliffs, playing laser tag and flying through space. In a mission to build a general AI capable of solving any problem put in front of it, DeepMind is open-sourcing its game code to everyone. The software and 14 levels from DeepMind Labs will be put on GitHub later this week. And, not to be outdone, Elon Musk's own OpenAI is also releasing its own'computer training ground' called Universe. Universe is open-source software that supports Gym; OpenAI's toolkit for testing its algorithms which help software play games, for example, using a reward scheme.

In this video, we first go over the history of video game AI, then I introduce OpenAI's Universe, which lets you build a bot that can play thousands of different video games. It has environments for all sorts of games, from Space Invaders, to Grand Theft Auto, to Protein folding simulations. For your README, just include a 1-3 sentence description of your strategy and instructions on how to run the code.The demo code can be found in the README of the Universe repo. They are awesome!! Please subscribe! That's what keeps me going.

In OpenAI's Universe, Computers Learn to Use Apps Like Humans Do Stay up-to-date on the topics you care about. We'll send you an email alert whenever a news article matches your alert term. It's free, and you can add new alerts at any time.