Google is teashing machines to play Atari games like Space Invaders,Video Pinball, and Breakout. And they’re getting pretty good.
At DeepMind, a Google subsidiary based in Cambridge, England, researchers have built artificial intelligence software that’s so adept at these classic games, it can sometimes beat a human player—and a professional, at that. This may seem like a frivolous, if intriguing, pursuit. But it’s a step toward something bigger. If a machine can learn to navigate the digital world of a video game, Google says, it eventually could learn to navigate the real world, too. Today, this AI can play Space Invaders. Tomorrow, it could control the robots that will build our gadgets and toys, and the autonomous cars that will drive from place to place entirely on their own.
via Wired
Image: JOZEF DUNAJ/GETTY IMAGES
