OpenAI teaches artificial intelligence with Universe software

Elon Musk's OpenAI has announced Universe, a piece of software that can measure and train an AI's intelligence for use in gaming, websites and other applications.

It learns to use a computer as a human does, by watching how a screen works and operating a virtual keyboard and mouse. This technique means an AI can learn how to carry out any tasks that a human can do using a computer.

Universe is a natural progression of the company's Gym toolkit, which was launched in April to help develop and compare reinforcement learning algorithms, it said. the new platform allows any environment to be turned into a gym by automatically launching the program behind a VNC remote desktop.

"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."

OpenAI said it has partnered with some of the biggest names in gaming including EA, Microsoft Studios, Valve, Wolfram to help it better understand how people play games and use applications.

This latest release of Universe comprises more than a thousand environments for AIs to use in order to learn how to do more, including Portal, Fable Anniversary, World of Goo, Mirror's Edge, Wolfram Mathematica and Magic Carpet.

OpenAI is now appealing for more companies in the gaming sector to help it build up the intelligence of its AI beings, including allowing the company to use gaming environments in order to train them to a more advanced level.