Google DeepMind AI Navigates a Doom-like 3D Maze Just by Looking
By New Scientist, February 13, 2016
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Google DeepMind just entered the 90s. Fresh off their success in playing the ancient game of Go, DeepMind’s latest artificial intelligence can navigate a 3D maze reminiscent of the 1993 shooter game Doom.
Unlike most game-playing AIs, the system has no access to the game’s internal code. Instead it plays just as a human would, by looking at the screen and deciding how to proceed. This ability to navigate a 3D space by “sight” could be useful for AIs operating in the real world.
The work builds on research DeepMind published last year, in which the team trained an AI to play 49 different video games from the Atari 2600, a games console popular in the 1980s. The software wasn’t told the rules of the games, and instead had to watch the screen to come up with its own strategies to get a high score. It was able to beat a top human player in 23 of the games.
