Google’s DeepMind and Elon Musk’s OpenAI have announced that they will open-source their artificial intelligence (AI) platforms to researchers.
OpenAI said that it will release a software platform called Universe for measuring and training an AI’s general intelligence across games, websites and other applications.
Universe enables an AI agent to use a computer like a human does by looking at screen pixels and operating a virtual keyboard and mouse.
OpenAI said: “We must train AI systems on the full range of tasks we expect them to solve, and Universe lets us train a single agent on any task a human can complete with a computer.”
The software platform allows conversion of any programme into a Gym environment, which was launched by OpenAI in April to develop and compare reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms.
Universe does not require special access to programme internals, source code, or bot APIs and it works by automatically launching the program behind a VNC remote desktop.
The release consists of a thousand environments including Flash games, browser tasks, and games.
OpenAI said: “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.”
Taking a similar step, Google’s parent Alphabet has announced plans to open-source DeepMind Lab, a fully 3D game-like platform tailored for agent-based AI research.
The platform can be observed from a first-person viewpoint, through the eyes of the simulated agent.
Scenes are provided with rich science fiction-style visuals and the agents can be able to look around and move in 3D with the available actions.
DeepMind said: “The agent’s “body” is a floating orb. It levitates and moves by activating thrusters opposite its desired direction of movement, and it has a camera that moves around the main sphere as a ball-in-socket joint tracking the rotational look actions.”
The company said that DeepMind Lab is highly customisable and extendable, with off-the-shelf editor tools enable to author new levels.
Levels can be customised with gameplay logic, item pickups, custom observations, level restarts, reward schemes, in-game messages and others.
In January 2014, Google announced the acquisition of the UK-based artificial intelligence company DeepMind Technologies.
