In the Quest for General Intelligence, AIs Are Chasing Chickens in Minecraft

If artificial intelligence (AI) agents are to become real players in society, using their machine abilities to complement our human strengths, they must first become players in the video game of Minecraft. And to prove themselves in Minecraft, they must work together to capture animals in a maze, build towers of blocks, and hunt for treasure while fighting off skeletons. That, anyway, is the premise of a competition organized by Microsoft, Queen Mary University of London, and crowdAI (a platform for data-science challenges). Next month, the organizers will announce the winner--the team that created an AI that could best observe its Minecraft environment, determine which of three missions it had to accomplish, and then collaborate with another AI agent to carry out that mission. By emphasizing adaptability and cooperation, the organizers aimed to encourage research on AI agents that could one day interact with humans to accomplish tasks in the real world.