An artificial intelligence (AI) system has for the first time figured out how to collect diamonds in the hugely popular video game Minecraft — a difficult task requiring multiple steps — without being shown how to play. Its creators say the system, called Dreamer, is a step towards machines that can generalize knowledge learned in one domain to new situations, a major goal of AI.
Collecting a diamond is “a very hard task”, says computer scientist Jeff Clune at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who was part of a separate team that trained a program to find diamonds using videos of human play. “There is no question this represents a major step forward for the field.”
An even bigger target for AI, says Clune, is the ultimate challenge for Minecraft players: killing the Ender Dragon, the virtual world’s most fearsome creature.
The associated preprint
Associated blog post
~~Neuro-sama: finally a worthwhile opponent~~
So the funny thing is... the lead researcher added "finding diamonds" since it's a niche and highly difficult task that involves multi-step processing (have to cut wood, make pickaxe, mine iron, ...) that the AI was not trained on. DeepMind has a good track record with real life usage of their AI... so I think their ultimate goal is to make the AI go from "Minecraft kiddies" to something that can think on the spot to help with treating rare disease or something like that
Y'know they could have used something like Slay the Spire or Balatro... but I digress
"Think"
Edit: second one not the first.