Facebook is using Minecraft to build an AI assistant

Facebook is hoping it can train an AI assistant to understand a broad range of human commands with a little help from one of the biggest games in the world -- Minecraft. A group of Facebook researchers published a paper in July explaining why they think Minecraft is the perfect place for an AI to learn about human communication. The key lies in the fact that Minecraft is what's known as a "sandbox" game, where players can roam around with relatively free rein as to what they want to do or build, while also following a set of relatively simple rules. The researchers also hope that the natural curiosity of Minecraft players will give the AI plenty of humans to practise with. "Since we work in a game environment, players may enjoy interacting with the assistants as they are developed, yielding a rich resource for human-in-the-loop research," the paper says.