Elon Musk and Google Open Their Artificial Intelligence Platforms to Researchers
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We've all heard of artificial intelligence (AI) being able to learn specific tasks, such as chess or go, sufficiently to beat out even the best humans. But these AI programs couldn't necessarily to applied directly to other tasks or games and still perform well, which requires a more general intelligence. To help progress the more generalized AI Elon Musk's OpenAI Universe and Google's Deepmind Labs have both been open sourced and made freely available to anyone on Github.
Both of these projects use an AI agent (i.e. a player of a game) that is able to perform anything a human would do through a computer. Unlike in the games of chess or go, where players (human or AI) have full information by seeing all the pieces on the board, many games just like the real world have parts that are hidden to us. Think about poker (Texas Hold'em) for example where you wouldn't see your opponents cards through the hand. While you have information available such as how your opponent has played previous hands and cards they may have shown, bets made, or physical tells (like a facial twitch or certain body movements) there's no way to absolutely know what cards the other player currently has. The best you (or an AI poker agent) can do is piece together what information you do have and make your best educated guess.
Google DeepMind Labs
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Life in general is similar to the games where all information isn't known. To further this line of development, Google's DeepMind Labs has struck a partnership with Blizzard Games to allow researchers to use their now open sourced software to build AI agents to master playing Starcraft 2.
But this could have effects that go far beyond just Starcraft II. "On a broader scope, these advancements we make in Starcraft might help us when we apply them to the real world challenges we face in science, energy, and other human endeavors," Vinyals said. Indeed, in a blog post announcing the partnership, Google Deepmind notes that the complexity of Starcraft II makes it "useful bridge to the messiness of the real-world."
-Source
Elon Musk's OpenAI Universe
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OpenAI Universe is "a software platform for measuring and training an AI's general intelligence across the world's supply of games, websites and other applications." Rather than focusing on a single task or game, Musk's project instead give the AI agent/player the ability to recognize pixels on the screen as well as control a virtual keyboard and mouse, much like a human player would use to view and control a game character. This lets the the "robot player" to delve into any computer game and begin to learn and adapt so it can perform well across many different types of tasks. Currently there are thousands of games that can be played in the OpenAI Universe including Atari, flash and browser based games as well as more popular titles such at Slitherio and Grand Theft Auto V.
Our goal is to develop a single AI agent that can flexibly apply its past experience on Universe environments to quickly master unfamiliar, difficult environments, which would be a major step towards general intelligence.
-Source
OpenAI has already partnered with major game developer companies such as EA, Microsoft Studios, Valve which has given them access learning well known games such as Minecraft, World of Goo, Kerbal Space Program, Wing Commander III, Portal and Rimworld. Now anybody can freely download the OpenAI Universe and start creating AI to learn and perform well across thousands of games.
Where to Download
OpenAI Universe Website: https://universe.openai.com/
Open AI Universe Github: https://github.com/openai/universe
Google DeepMind Labs Website: https://deepmind.com/blog/open-sourcing-deepmind-lab/
Google DeepMind Website: https://github.com/deepmind/lab
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Wow, this is pretty cool, somewhat scary stuff...
A while back I was browsing the web to find open source or free to use AI tools and environments for a project I was dreaming of. I was surprised at how much was available, including access to IBM's Watson, and a programming library called Deeplearning4j.
It seems as if the OpenAI Universe might be usable to create a web crawling agent capable of successfully responding to a lot of Captcha type challenges.
Too much fun, not enough time... ;)
TY! And very true. Any generalized AI can absolutely lead down 'darker paths' whether it's getting around 'humanity checks' like captcha's or further down the road a more Matrix or Skynet sort of scenario. To me this always leads back to the question of "What exactly makes us human?" If what we are can be replaced by AI, to many it seems to cheapen our humanity to a degree. Personally I take it in the sense of finding that next thing we as humans have to offer...at least until AI++ comes around to replace our more abstract or creative aspects (like an AI Leonardo DaVinci type program.)
There definitely is a ton of open source AI tools and libraries out there. I toyed around with PyBrain for a while some years back. Personally I've been interested in seeing how combinations of neural nets (to provide a more gut instinct response) with logic flow chart systems (more of the conscious reasoning) could be used to build up a more general AI while having the webcrawling and analysis capabilities of searching and digesting information off the internet.
I totally understand on the 'not enough time' aspect of things, lol. On the upside, it was cool to see that OpenAI was saying it only took 9 lines of code to get things going, which is quite a stretch from what I had to go through to set things up in the past. I await the turnkey solution for this where people can just download an app to further the AI training.
Indeed! My friend @baerdric raised a perhaps related question in a spectacularly good short Sci-Fi story recently. That question is one of our identity. What makes you you and me me? I think you might really enjoy his story:
Spaceship of Theseus
If the OpenAI can produce interesting results in 9 lines, maybe I'll try playing with it one of these days! ;)
That's one I've had in my 'to read' bookmark folders, but now it's at the top of my list to get to next. I can't wait to see how he approached that question.
Terrific! I don't think you'll be disappointed! ;)
I wonder if funding any of this project has been a cause in the drop of Tesla stocks lately.
But then again, I know almost nothing about markets outside of cryptos :P
Ultimately I have to say that I really don't know the causes on the Tesla stock prices dropping. But I have seen a lot of news in the last few days revolving around concerns of losing tax breaks under the new Trump administration. I'll flatly admit that I'm no expert on this though.
https://investorplace.com/2016/12/tesla-motors-inc-tsla-stock-trump-leave-in-dust/
I am not sure but part of it could be people seeing Trump as 1/ climate change denier that he is - and hitching their wagons to that train $ wise - 2/ Related to point 1 -- the fact he is completely tied to Big Oil with his money, policy and people.
2 days in a row on Elon! - I challenge you to 5 days in a row on him or Tesla or stuff he owns lol. It can easily be done without getting tired!
That may be a tough one with the end of this week having to do my move to another city, I'll see what I can pull off on this. I do have at least one other topic that Musk spoke on last month in my back pocket right now. Lol
Prepare the drafts ahead of time, and post one a day! Do you want me to help you a bit and you can focus on the move, I know that is a big deal in life, and usually sucks a lot lol
Very interesting! AI technology continues to increase in complexity and power with each passing year. It is interesting to see how the capabilities of even "simple" video game AI's are becoming quite impressive. Thank you for writing up this post!
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Thank you! Usually I see more about AI in the game, versus using the games to actually train the AI itself. This was a fun one to delve into.
Long Live SteemSTEM! :D
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