AI Can Re-create Video Games Just By Watching Them

• Updated on: 2019-06-18
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AI Can Re-create Video Games Just By Watching Them
Machines just took aim at video game development—from the 80s. AIs have been able to learn to play games like Space Invaders by watching them for a while. But now, Georgia Tech researchers have written a paper describing how AI can actually create the underlying game engine of Super Mario Bros. just by spectating.
The approach, first reported by the Verge , works by analyzing thousands of frames of gameplay to see what happens as everyone’s favorite mustachioed plumber moves through the game. The AI looks at what changes between one frame and the next, and tries to link cause to effect—what happens when Mario, say, touches a coin, or lands on an evil sentient mushroom (oh, OK then: a Goomba).
Over time, the researchers say, the AI can build up rules into a rudimentary version of the game engine. The Verge’s James Vincent calls the results “glitchy, but passable,” and notes that the tool is only limited to simple 2-D platform games like Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man at the moment.
Speaking to the Verge, one of the researchers says “a future version of this could [analyze] limited domains of reality.” That’s a nice idea, but it’s also correctly caveated by the researcher. As we’ve explained before, making sense of the world is one of the biggest challenges facing AI right now —and recreating Super Mario Bros. is only a very small jump towards cracking it.
 
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AI Can Re-create Video Games Just By Watching Them
Machines just took aim at video game development—from the 80s. AIs have been able to learn to play games like Space Invaders by watching them for a while. But now, Georgia Tech researchers have written a paper describing how AI can actually create the… Read more
Machines just took aim at video game development—from the 80s. AIs have been able to learn to play games like Space Invaders by watching them for a while. But now, Georgia Tech researchers have written a paper describing how AI can actually create the underlying game engine of Super Mario Bros. just by spectating.
The approach, first reported by the Verge , works by analyzing thousands of frames of gameplay to see what happens as everyone’s favorite mustachioed plumber moves through the game. The AI looks at what changes between one frame and the next, and tries to link cause to effect—what happens when Mario, say, touches a coin, or lands on an evil sentient mushroom (oh, OK then: a Goomba).
Over time, the researchers say, the AI can build up rules into a rudimentary version of the game engine. The Verge’s James Vincent calls the results “glitchy, but passable,” and notes that the tool is only limited to simple 2-D platform games like Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man at the moment.
Speaking to the Verge, one of the researchers says “a future version of this could [analyze] limited domains of reality.” That’s a nice idea, but it’s also correctly caveated by the researcher. As we’ve explained before, making sense of the world is one of the biggest challenges facing AI right now —and recreating Super Mario Bros. is only a very small jump towards cracking it.
 
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China and India Want All New Cars to Be Electric
The desire to kill off internal combustion is spreading. Bloomberg  reports that China plans to end the sale of fossil-fuel-burning vehicles, though it’s not yet clear when the ban will kick in. Meanwhile,  Reuters explains  that India plans to electrify… Read more
The desire to kill off internal combustion is spreading. Bloomberg  reports that China plans to end the sale of fossil-fuel-burning vehicles, though it’s not yet clear when the ban will kick in. Meanwhile,  Reuters explains  that India plans to electrify all new vehicles by 2030, with a detailed explanation of how that will happen expected by the end of the year.
A year or two ago, that kind of news would have been practically unthinkable. But as America under the Trump administration  turns its back on efforts to address climate change , India and China have emerged as unlikely icons in the battle to save the planet.
China is currently the largest electric-vehicle market in the world with a thriving electric-car industry , though there are still far fewer such cars on the roads than those powered by gas and diesel. India is further behind and still lacks a domestic battery manufacturing industry, which may make a homegrown electric-vehicle scene slower to take off.
Even so, if the two huge Asian countries do push ahead as reported and stamp out cars that run on fossil fuels, they will join the U.K. and France , which have both recently decided to outlaw the sale of new internal-combustion cars by 2040.
Such big policy shifts that, as we’ve argued before, are the only way to quickly make electric cars pervasive . A recent analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance suggested that electric vehicles could account for as many as half of all new cars sold by 2040. If moves like those in India and China continue to be announced, this optimistic assessment may actually stand a chance of coming true.
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Thermal Imaging Aims to Give Autonomous Cars Better Night Vision
There are many striking differences between a fence post and a human being, but one may prove particularly useful to robotic vehicles: temperature.
At least that's what the established thermal imaging firm FLIR and the Israeli startup Adasky think. Both… Read more
There are many striking differences between a fence post and a human being, but one may prove particularly useful to robotic vehicles: temperature.
At least that's what the established thermal imaging firm FLIR and the Israeli startup Adasky think. Both companies are building new thermal sensors for use in autonomous cars, and they believe that the extra data could be used to spot hazards in adverse conditions. Humans and animals on or near the road, in particular, create far more heat than their surroundings.
Some high-end automakers, including Porsche, BMW, and Audi, have been fitting vehicles with thermal imaging sensors from FLIR for several years. The vehicles use them to alert a driver to the presence of animals or people on the road at night, which may not show up within reach of the car's headlights. Those sensors offer an image 320 pixels wide by 240 high.
Now, both FLIR and Adasky hope to achieve a similar result in autonomous cars using new sensors that they're both building.
Adasky today announced a new far-infrared sensor, called Viper, that offers better resolution (640 pixels by 480) at refresh rates of 60 frames per second and can detect temperature differences as small as 0.05 °C. Adasky's Dror Meiri tells MIT Technology Review that such sensitivity allows the device not just to spot something like an elk on the road, but also to easily discern things like black ice on the surface of a highway. He says the device should be in mass production by 2020.
The video above shows Adasky's sensor in use on a country road. On the left is a visible-light camera, on the right its thermal sensor. Cyclists, pedestrians, and animals certainly show up far more sharply on the right. And the sharp contrast with surroundings would make it easier for a car to approach those living hazards with caution in a way that lidar, which provides only ranging information, may not.
FLIR is also developing a VGA device for use specifically in self-driving cars. Paul Clayton, director of automotive at FLIR, says that sample units of the sensors are being shipped to some manufacturers for testing this year and that mass-produced sensors could cost "a couple of hundred bucks."
If you're wondering why another sensor may be required in a driverless car, both companies point to an important, if uninspiring word: redundancy. "It's an augment, a somewhat redundant sensor that helps classify in bad lighting conditions or weather," explains Clayton. We've explained in the past that multiple sensors can allow autonomous cars to make better sense of their surroundings , and the sharp contrast of thermal imaging may enable, say, a glimpse of a human to provide extra context that helps avert a dangerous incident.
Even so, an extra sensor does provide another data stream to process, and because thermal imaging is less widely used on the roads than visible-light cameras and even lidar, the machine-learning systems that discern details from footage will have to catch up. Both firms seem to understand that: Adasky has built its own AI to process data for its customers, and FLIR is putting together a thermal image database that clients can use to train their own neural networks.
Adoption of thermal imaging in autonomous vehicles is likely to come down to budget. Some manufacturers may balk at the expense of yet another sensor, but until cheap lidar sensors offer the quality that automakers might like , the devices could add a useful layer of safety.
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