The robo 'gym' where Minecraft is being used to train super smart AI

For Katja Hofmann, Minecraft is not just a virtual world: it is a gym for artificial intelligences. Hofmann, 36, is the lead researcher on Microsoft Research Lab's Project Malmo, an open-source platform that makes it possible to test AIs inside the game's pixelated universe. "A question in artificial intelligence is how we get AIs to learn how to interact in a complex environment, to experiment in a wide range of settings," she says. Researchers using Project Malmo, which was made available to developers in July 2016 after a year of in-house testing at Microsoft's Cambridge-based lab, can create AI agents and set them loose in a modified version of Minecraft's free-to-roam 3D environment. There, through trial and error, the agents learn how to move, walk and dodge obstacles in a physically consistent world - something usually requiring expensive robots.