Machine Learning Zone: OpenAI competition takes on Sonic the Hedgehog

Retro video games have been a useful platform for machine learning research for years, and the systems created have been creeping through the classics, mastering them as they go. Sonic the Hedgehog may be the next to fall: OpenAI has announced a competition to apply machine learning to the classic Sega game. It's not vastly different from what's been attempted before, things like playing Super Mario Bros or Space Invaders, or even the likes of Doom. But the rules are a bit different here. A very basic summary of how AIs learn to play something like Mario is this: an algorithm is set up with some basic capabilities like recognizing objects on screen and monitoring the in-game score.