A Microsoft Research team has created a competition using Project Malmo, a platform that uses Minecraft as a testing ground for advanced artificial intelligence research. The team is challenging PhD students to develop an AI that learns to collaborate with other randomly assigned players to achieve a high score in a mini-game within the virtual world. The field of collaborative AI research involves the development of technologies that work with, empower and augment human capabilities. The ability to collaborate is key to the development of a general AI that can mimic the nuanced and complex way humans learn and make decisions. Such an AI would represent an evolution from task-specific AI technologies that recognize speech, translate languages and caption images.