Why it matters: Minecraft may not sound like an important tool that supports advanced AI research. After all, what could possibly be so important about teaching a machine to play a sandbox game released more than a decade ago? Based on OpenAI's recent efforts, a well-trained Minecraft bot is more relevant to AI advancement than most people might realize. OpenAI has always focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning advances that benefit humanity. Recently, the company successfully trained a bot to play Minecraft using more than 70,000 hours of gameplay videos. The achievement is far more than just a bot playing a game.

The result is a breakthrough for a technique known as imitation learning, in which neural networks are trained how to perform tasks by watching humans do them. Imitation learning can be used to train AI to control robot arms, drive cars or navigate webpages. There is a vast amount of video online showing people doing different tasks. By tapping into this resource, the researchers hope to do for imitation learning what GPT-3 did for large language models. "In the last few years we've seen the rise of this GPT-3 paradigm where we see amazing capabilities come from big models trained on enormous swathes of the internet," says Bowen Baker at OpenAI, one of the team behind the new Minecraft bot.

The result is a breakthrough for a technique known as imitation learning, in which neural networks are trained how to perform tasks by watching humans do them. Imitation learning can be used to train AI to control robot arms, drive cars or navigate webpages. There is a vast amount of video online showing people doing different tasks. By tapping into this resource, the researchers hope to do for imitation learning what GPT-3 did for large language models. "In the last few years we've seen the rise of this GPT-3 paradigm where we see amazing capabilities come from big models trained on enormous swathes of the internet," says Bowen Baker at OpenAI, one of the team behind the new Minecraft bot.

Microsoft just showed how artificial intelligence could find its way into many software applications--by writing code on the fly. At the Microsoft Build developer conference today, the company's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, demonstrated an AI helper for the game Minecraft. The non-player character within the game is powered by the same machine learning technology Microsoft has been testing for auto-generating software code. The feat hints at how recent advances in AI could change personal computing in years to come by replacing interfaces that you tap, type, and click to navigate into interfaces that you simply have a conversation with. The Minecraft agent responds appropriately to typed commands by converting them into working code behind the scenes using the software API for the game.

Microsoft just showed how artificial intelligence could find its way into many software applications--by writing code on the fly. At the Microsoft Build developer conference today, the company's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, demonstrated an AI helper for the game Minecraft. The non-player character within the game is powered by the same machine learning technology Microsoft has been testing for auto-generating software code. The feat hints at how recent advances in AI could change personal computing in years to come by replacing interfaces that you tap, type, and click to navigate into interfaces that you simply have a conversation with. The Minecraft agent responds appropriately to typed commands by converting them into working code behind the scenes using the software API for the game.