You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Could we get AI agents to work in the same way as the robots in Star Wars or be as helpful as Wally?

Jim Fan is expanding the capabilities of AI by training it on Minecraft. In his 2023 talk from TED AI,

fan takes us through his work

and how it's part of the next big advancement in AI after the break.

In the spring of 2016,

I was sitting in a classroom at Columbia University,

but wasn't paying attention to the lecture.

Instead, I was watching a board game tournament on my laptop.

It wasn't just any tournament, but a very, very special one.

The match was between Arfogo and Lee Siddell.

The AI has just won three out of five games and became the first ever to beat a human

champion at the Game of Go. I still remember the adrenaline of seeing history unfold that day.

The glory moment when AI agents finally entered the mainstream. But when the excitement fades,

I realized that as mighty as AlphaGo was,

it could only do one thing and one thing alone.

It isn't able to play any other games,

like Super Mario or Minecraft,

and it certainly cannot do a dirty laundry

or cook a nice dinner for you tonight. But what we

truly want are AI agents as versatile as Wally, as diverse as all the robot body forms or embodiments

in Star Wars, and works across infinite realities, virtual or physical, as in Ready Player 1.

So how can we achieve these science fictions in possibly the near future?

...