Mario AI Competition

togelius writes "We're running a competition to see who can program the best AI for a version of Super Mario Bros. It's about deciding what to do at each time step — run, jump, shoot etc. — based on a description of the platforms, items and enemies around Mario. This is hard. It's so hard we believe that some sort of machine learning algorithm will be necessary to reach good playing performance. But really, any approach is fair game. We welcome hard-coded submissions, commercial AI programmers, academics and amateurs alike. Whoever wins, it will be really interesting. The competition is associated with two IEEE conferences, and there are cash prizes available for the best submissions."

Comments

The prize seems kind of paltry

[BadAnalogyGuy]

500 dollars for the winner, but you are expecting evolutionary neural nets, genetic programming, fuzzy logic, and temporal difference learning.

The temporal difference between the effort to build such an AI and 500 bucks seems a little too great.

Re:The prize seems kind of paltry

[Sockatume]

On the other hand offering a larger prize for a competition of this nature is pointless. I doubt that you'd get MIT to devote a research grant even if it was offering up $500,000.

Thanks for the advanced notification!

[risinganger]

We welcome hard-coded submissions, commercial AI programmers, academics and amateurs alike.

Yet you only post this on slashdot with 13 days before the deadline. You couldn't have posted it here back in May? (the earliest date a post seems to have in your google group).

Re:Thanks for the advanced notification!

[TheRaven64]

Maybe he submitted it back in May and it was waiting since then for an 'editor' to approve it?

Re:Let's see if any of these guys have a go...

[Sockatume]

I'm doubt that would count, seeing as you've just got a human doing the decisions. It's "artificial intelligence" not "artificial fingers".

too short.

[tetha]

I highly like this competitions idea, but I won't participate, because the deadline is far, far too soon.

I mean, I am supposed to understand their framework and implement, test and tweak an artificial intelligence for a pretty complicated task like this in a month (let alone, 2 weeks), with my rusty java, rusty AI-knowledge (I'd try emergent behaviour, probably)? Sorry, but this is just plain impossible, since there is enough work to do from the university and other hobby projects. Give me until, like. Christmas and I'd try.

Plus, the time shortens even further, as it appears that there are documentation issues, so one would probably have to work out how the game state is given to the AI.

So overall: very interesting, but too short for someone who actually has other work to do

Re:too short.

[WarpGiGA]

Consider just doing it for fun then, the $500 price isn't worth whining about anyways.

Re:Original author here.

[Hatta]

So how does it test that a random level is completable? Seems to me that if there were an algorithm to do this, this competition would be moot. If there's not, there's going to be a lot of trouble with impossible random levels.

Re:Can humans even do this reasonably?

[Bakkster]

Can humans even do this reasonably?

No, but shouldn't a computer be able to do it better? Perfect concentration, perfect timing, the ability to make split-second decisions, no visual limitations of how much of the screen can be seen; computers have the potential to do far better. Isn't that the idea?