AI learns to defy the laws of physics to win at hide-and-seek

Never play games with a bot – it will find a way to cheat if they can. A team from OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco co-founded by Elon Musk, has developed artificially intelligent bots that taught themselves to cooperate by playing hide-and-seek. The bots also learned how to use basic tools and that defying the laws of physics can help you win. In April, a team of bots known as the OpenAI Five beat the human world champions at the team-based video game DOTA 2. The hide-and-seek bots use similar principles to learn but the simpler game allows for more inventive play. Bowen Baker at OpenAI and his colleagues wanted to see if the team-based dynamics of the OpenAI Five could be used to generate skills that could one day be useful to humans.