AI has bested chess and Go, but it struggles to find a diamond in Minecraft

Whether we’re learning to cook an omelet or drive a car, the path to mastering new skills often begins by watching others. But can artificial intelligence learn the same way? A new challenge teaching AI agents to play Minecraft suggests it’s much trickier for computers.

Announced earlier this year, the MineRL competition asked teams of researchers to create AI bots that could successfully mine a diamond in Minecraft. This isn’t an impossible task, but it does require a mastery of the game’s basics. Players need to know how to cut down trees, craft pickaxes, and explore underground caves while dodging monsters and lava. These are the sorts of skills that most adults could pick up after a few hours of experimentation or learn much faster...

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