AI can now play Minecraft just as well as you - here's why that matters

Experts at OpenAI have trained a neural network to play Minecraft to an equally high standard as human players. The neural network was trained on 70,000 hours of miscellaneous in-game footage, supplemented with a small database of videos in which contractors performed specific in-game tasks, with the keyboard and mouse inputs also recorded. After fine-tuning, OpenAI found the model was able to perform all manner of complex skills, from swimming to hunting for animals and consuming their meat. It also grasped the "pillar jump", a move whereby the player places a block of material below themselves mid-jump in order to gain elevation. Perhaps most impressive, the AI was able to craft diamond tools (requiring a long string of actions to be executed in sequence), which OpenAI described as an "unprecedented" achievement for a computer agent.