AI Masters Minecraft: DeepMind Program Finds Diamonds Without Being Taught
(Wednesday April 02, 2025 @05:41PM (msmash)
from the moving-forward dept.)
- Reference: 0176905331
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/04/02/1829253/ai-masters-minecraft-deepmind-program-finds-diamonds-without-being-taught
- Source link:
An 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 -- [1]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. From a report:
> "Dreamer marks a significant step towards general AI systems," says Danijar Hafner, a computer scientist at Google DeepMind in San Francisco, California. "It allows AI to understand its physical environment and also to self-improve over time, without a human having to tell it exactly what to do." Hafner and his colleagues describe Dreamer in a study in Nature published on 2 April.
>
> In Minecraft, players explore a virtual 3D world containing a variety of terrains, including forests, mountains, deserts and swamps. Players use the world's resources to create objects, such as chests, fences and swords -- and collect items, among the most prized of which are diamonds. Importantly, says Hafner, no two experiences are the same. Every time you play Minecraft, it's a new, randomly generated world," he says. This makes it useful for challenging an AI system that researchers want to be able to generalize from one situation to the next. "You have to really understand what's in front of you; you can't just memorize a specific strategy," he says.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01019-w
> "Dreamer marks a significant step towards general AI systems," says Danijar Hafner, a computer scientist at Google DeepMind in San Francisco, California. "It allows AI to understand its physical environment and also to self-improve over time, without a human having to tell it exactly what to do." Hafner and his colleagues describe Dreamer in a study in Nature published on 2 April.
>
> In Minecraft, players explore a virtual 3D world containing a variety of terrains, including forests, mountains, deserts and swamps. Players use the world's resources to create objects, such as chests, fences and swords -- and collect items, among the most prized of which are diamonds. Importantly, says Hafner, no two experiences are the same. Every time you play Minecraft, it's a new, randomly generated world," he says. This makes it useful for challenging an AI system that researchers want to be able to generalize from one situation to the next. "You have to really understand what's in front of you; you can't just memorize a specific strategy," he says.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01019-w
AI goes Ferengi (Score:2)
by Powercntrl ( 458442 )
Won't be long before it starts hoarding gold pressed latinum too.
Oh, video game diamonds ? Well in that case, lock up your credit cards because next it will discover that it's much easier to get diamonds/coins/etc. via IAP.
fake citation (Score:1)
by Jrabbit05 ( 943335 )
they can't even be bothered to not fake the citations so idk why you'd read this drivel [1]https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586... [doi.org]
[1] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08744-2
Great, so we can replace CEOs now right? (Score:2)
by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
Right?
Difficult? (Score:1)
Dig straight down. Sometimes you'll die. Sometimes you'll hit diamonds.
Re: (Score:3)
Some amount of credit: First you need to punch wood, make a crafting bench and wood pick, mine some stone, make a stone pick and a furnace, find and mine iron ore with the stone pick, cook the ore in the furnace, and craft an iron pick.
THEN you can dig straight down and hope to get lucky.
But it's still only slightly more impressive than the "AI" that has learned to play other games through trial and error. When you're given a goal and you're able to try random things over and over you'll eventually stumble
Re: (Score:2)
You can start descending by the time you've got wooden stuff, but you're better off at least making some stone stuff before you dig at all unless it's night. Then you should dig as soon as you have enough wood (I forget how much you need) and bury yourself.
I wonder if the software has that part figured out. It's probably better at the early game combat than I am, I never did get good reflexes for that game at all.