Researchers create a video game Mario that thinks for himself
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Before you know it, your video games could be playing themselves. Researchers in Germany are working on giving Nintendo's best-known character a form of artificial intelligence, the Verge reports.
Their goal is a "Living and Conversing Mario Agent" that can act on commands given not with a gamepad but by simply talking to him. "Mario has become aware of himself and his environment—at least to a certain extent," a researcher says in a video entry for an artificial intelligence competition.
This version of the character, it seems, learns as he plays through a standard Mario world—and researchers are also working on a project in which both Mario and Luigi are controlled by AI and are able to speak to each other, thus sharing information and teaching each other.
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AI Mario's experience in his world can inform his actions, Newsweek reports. "We give him internal needs—what we call a constant homeostatic state—like hunger, and whenever this equilibrium becomes unbalanced Mario learns to respond based on his previous interactions with objects," a scientist says.
Mario can, for instance, get "hungry"—and learn that collecting coins reduces this hunger. Meanwhile, the video shows a researcher informing Mario that if he jumps on a Goomba baddie, that baddie will be defeated; he "builds up knowledge rules" as he plays.
And he can even formulate what he's learned into speech. But he's no genius, researchers note; so far, his "intelligence" is comparable to your standard gaming enemy.
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(That may come as a relief to Stephen Hawking.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Researchers Making Mario Think for Himself
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