Much of the sci-fi genre would have you believe that artificial intelligence would bring about the downfall of mankind by rising up and slaughtering its creators, but the recent boom in AI technology has focused on work crimes like journalistic misconduct And robbing artists of their commissions. So while AI is mainly used to make creatives obsolete, Microsoft appears to be running internal tests on a demo that essentially makes AI play Minecraft to you.
Continue reading: What People Get Wrong When Thinking About Video Game AI
According to a report by traffic lightsthe demo recently showed technology that allowed the user to just say it Minecraft what to do and it would move your character, collect materials and more based on your instructions. MinecraftThe open nature of has apparently posed some challenge for the engineers as there are multiple ways to complete a task in Mojang’s game. The example given in the report is building a car Minecraft, which can be done in countless ways depending on the supplies you have on hand. So if you say something generic like “build a car” you probably won’t get as precise an in-game action as “build a car out of blocks of stone”.
While the technique could be interesting, and maybe make it Minecraft more accessible to people who have trouble playing with traditional controllers or a mouse and keyboard, Semafor’s sources say Microsoft has no plans to implement the AI technology in a public version of Minecraft. These types of tech demos are constantly happening internally in large companies with no real application. But applying something like AI technology to a mainstream video game, such as Minecraft in a way that might make it easier for some people to play, is at least a more understandable use for the technology than “we want to replace the human element of an industry so we don’t have to pay people”.
At the moment, this sounds similar to the voice command technology Microsoft has been trying to implement in peripherals like the Kinect motion sensor, which added voice-like options to games The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim And Mass Effect 3. But given how this has gone badremains to be seen if the company plans to do this in the future or if it’s just trying something out.
