But will it find the warp zones?

Watch Out for Goombas When an AI program plays Super Mario Bros., will it do the end-level victory dance? Sergey Karakovskiy/Julian Togelius

Forget about beating human chess grandmasters. Now computer scientists have challenged the best AI programs to beat Nintendo's "Super Mario Bros.," and perhaps evolve along the way.

The new competition would pit different AI design approaches against one another, such as programs based on evolutionary learning techniques versus completely hand-coded programs. It uses a heavily modified, Java-based version of "Super Mario Bros." as a virtual playground for the AIs, with the added challenge of endless random level generation.

The researchers behind the project have no doubts about the educational benefits of video games for computer learning.

"As far as I'm concerned, Mario is the computer game, both as a gamer and as a good machine-learning challenge that requires a broad set of skills," said Julian Togelius of the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in a New Scientist interview.

Togelius and colleague Sergey Karakovskiy even envision better AI programs helping the video game industry develop more challenging games down the road.

For now, programmers must act quickly to meet the first deadline of August 18 for the Games Innovation Conference in London, and perhaps snag small cash prizes of $200, $100, and $50. A second contest deadline on September 3 for the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games offers a slightly heftier prize purse of $500.

Perhaps any Mario-learning software could take a cue from another project at Rutgers University, where a learning algorithm plowed its way through the classic Atari game "Pitfall." Cue victory dance … now.

[via New Scientist]

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12 Comments

Cool, now make AI that learns to play Portal.

Cuishi14

from avondale , az

or make an ai that can adapt to wat i do in command and conquer. not just throw tons of enimies at me

Pretty amazing. I can't imagine how challenging video games will get, now that AI can learn how to play them. I still like to play Mario Cart or Call of Duty online with other humans.

@steven have you ever heard of bf2 i think you'd like it. and speeking of bf2 i wish the AI's wouldn't try to walk thru walls

that will be a feat. If AI does learn to beat the game, a timed run will have to follow.

http://desktopgaming.com

0.0
WE ARE NO LONGER IN THE 8-BIT AGE...
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This is sweet. Now make one that plays Civilization 4!-DaSonicMan

Actually im with mblunk make an ai that can play portal with the ONLY GOOD CHEAT WORTH ANYTHING IN THAT GAME
-DaSonicMan

make a ai that can play half life at least most good video games atleast know about it or have seen gameplay of it

I love it, it's really fun :)

www.tendances-de-mode.com/tag/bottes

I guess that beyond the educational benefits of computer learning we can find a lot of other advantages for the whole public as parents. These computer games are the best way for youth to enhance their social mind and physical skils.
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And that's not the end. Imagine how fast it tooks from the first computers (roomsize monsters) to what we have now. Development in the hig tech industry grows expontential. So we can expect the first really thinking computer in about 10-15 years. Good info.
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Wow that used to be my favorite video game. It would be interesting to beat the Artificial Intelligence Software

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