Goats, Google and games: The future impact of a tech giant's push to train AI to play video games

Google has developed an artificial intelligence system that can play video games like a human and take orders from players and could eventually even have real-world implications down the line. "This work isn't about achieving high game scores," the SIMA research team wrote in a Google DeepMind post earlier this month. "Learning to play even one video game is a technical feat for an AI system, but learning to follow instructions in a variety of game settings could unlock more helpful AI agents for any environment." SIMA, which stands for Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent, isn't like a typical computer player that's built into a specific game. Rather, the AI agent plays alongside and learns like a human -- through image recognition and from native language commands -- and plays with keyboard and mouse outputs.