We’ve all played video games, and many of us will have watched other people play video games, but now the time has come to sit back and let AI do the job for us – and be surprisingly successful in the process!
Kaze Emanuar, a modder who has dedicated an awful lot of his time into changing up the familiar worlds of Super Mario 64 (and getting into trouble with Nintendo as a result), has taken things one step further and is now teaching multiple AIs to play the game.
Speaking to Kotaku, Emanuar explains that results so far have been mixed; the AIs are apparently very slow, ‘having a tendency to fixate on solutions that have worked in certain contexts and applying them too broadly’. Despite this, though, there have been a couple of occasions where an AI has managed to successfully collect an in-game star such as this example below.
It doesn’t end there, either. Emanuar goes on to explain that one particular AI has managed to learn and perform a technique that isn’t widely known amongst human players.
“One AI has learned to wall jump to gain height. Another one has learned to perform slope triple jumps, which is something a regular casual player would never do and is kind of a hidden mechanic in [Super] Mario 64.”
Collecting the odd star and jumping up a wall may seem like very small steps towards having AI be able to complete a full game, but it’s still an incredibly impressive feat nonetheless.
Can you envisage robots taking on Ganon in Zelda: Breath of the Wild‘s Master Mode within the next decade, or maybe finding every Power Moon in Super Mario Odyssey? Share your opinions in the comments below.