Researchers at Germany's University of Tubungen have been playing a lot of Mario. So much Mario that they no longer need to play Super Mario Bros, ever again- they've created an artificially intelligent Mario game that learns to play all by itself.
The AI system is extraordinarily complex. According to Engadget, this Mario can learn from interacting with his surroundings, and can also be taught instructions by the player. As well, he has emotions, and moods. If he's feeling curious, he can explore the environment and learn things about it, while not acting in a way that's specifically about completing the level. As well, this Mario can become "hungry" (hungry for coins, that is), and will search for coins to feed his urges.
Engadget even suggests that this technology could help aid future videogames, providing more detailed and lifelike enemy AI.
Venture Beat describes in a little more detail just how this thinking Mario works. He uses a speech-recognition toolkit, which allows him to understand various Engish phrases and sentences. Mario also has a "logic and grammar tree" that allows him to take those commands and the information in them, and apply them to the in-game world.
In the official video below (from the University of Tubungen), the AI can be seen in action- Mario goes from playing the game normall to stopping and figuring out just how some of the mechanics work. As well, there are more details about just how the researches have designed this artificial intelligence.
Watch the video below.
Will we see more AI like this in the future? In more difficult games than just "Super Mario"? It may be a classic, but there are probably more complicate video game worlds the researchers could advance into. Who knows? Maybe "Mario AI" is the very beginning of a long, play-it-yourself gaming tradition.
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