The Minecraft test that stumped AIs

It takes minutes for most new Minecraft players to work out how to dig up the diamonds that are key to the game, but training artificial intelligence to do it has proved harder than expected. Over the summer, Minecraft publisher Microsoft and other organisations challenged coders to create AI agents that could find the coveted gems. Most can crack it in their first session. But out of more than 660 entries submitted, not one was up to the task. The results of the MineRL - which is pronounced mineral - competition are due to be announced formally on Saturday at the NeurIPS AI conference in Vancouver, Canada.