Google’s DeepMind open-sources its 3D AI training platform
DeepMind,
the Google Inc.-owned machine learning firm behind
AlphaGo, has announced that it is open-sourcing DeepMind Lab, a
gamelike platform aimed at training artificial intelligences to navigate and
interact with 3D environments.
According
to DeepMind, the training framework’s 3D environment is better for developing
AI agents because it more closely resembles the real world, which is more
conducive to learning than more abstract AI frameworks.
“As
well as facilitating agent evaluation, there are compelling reasons to think
that it may be fundamentally easier to develop intelligence in a 3D world,
observed from a first-person viewpoint, like DeepMind Lab,” the DeepMind
team explained in a blog
post. “After all, the only known examples of general-purpose
intelligence in the natural world arose from a combination of evolution,
development, and learning, grounded in physics and the sensory apparatus of
animals.”
The
team added that it’s possible that “a large fraction of animal and human
intelligence is a direct consequence of the richness of our environment, and
unlikely to arise without it. Consider the alternative: if you or I had grown
up in a world that looked like Space Invaders or Pac-Man, it doesn’t seem
likely we would have achieved much general intelligence!”
DeepMind
has turned to a number of games in its AI research, from board games like Go to
video games like
Starcraft. In fact, the DeepMind Lab training platform itself is
built on top of Quake III Arena, a first-person shooter released in 1999 by Id
Software, the same studio behind Doom.
The
training platform allows AI agents to perform a number of tasks that take
advantage of the 3D environment, such as navigating mazes, collecting items,
learning and remembering randomly generated environments and more. Apparently,
DeepMind Lab even allows AI agents to practice their shooting skills with laser
tag, because AI researchers love
teaching robots how to kill things.
DeepMind
Lab is not the only game-based AI training platform out there. Earlier this
year, Microsoft Corp. open-sourced
Project Malmo, an AI testing platform based on the popular
block-building game, Minecraft. Both Minecraft and Quake III Arena are
first-person 3D game environments, but each has something different to offer AI
researchers.
For
example, Minecraft has a well developed crafting system, allowing AI agents to
practice building complicated structures and even logic systems. Meanwhile,
Quake III Arena offers faster, more precise movement with significantly more
speed and verticality, which could offer a better testing ground for highly
mobile AI agents.
You
can find out more about DeepMind Lab in the team’s in-depth
research paper, and you can watch a video of DeepMind Lab in
action here.
Image courtesy of Google
Source | http://siliconangle.com/
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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