Over the past few years, we have seen various attempts to teach an artificial intelligence how to play a video game. Now, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Interactive Computing published a paper outlining a method of teaching AI how to learn a game engine.
In previous projects, the AI has only been instructed on how to excel at a particular game. This study goes one step further, aiming to instill a deeper understanding of the mechanics at play, rather than just the fastest route to success.
The researchers decided to use Super Mario Bros. for the study, describing it in the paper as a “classic platformer.” The same game was at the core of previous researchers performed by the study’s authors, which developed an AI that was capable of creating new stages in the vein of those seen in the original.
For the purposes of this research, the AI was not given access to the game’s code, which would make it very easy for it to understand things like the height that the character could achieve with a jump or the effect various enemies had on the protagonist. Instead, it was fed video footage that it used to make assumptions how the game engine worked.
The footage was analyzed via a three-step process, starting with a scan that determines which objects were present in a given frame. A greedy matching algorithm was then run over a pair of adjacent frames to gauge changes made to those objects before each frame was parsed — if the second frame differed beyond a set amount from what the system expected to see in the next frame, an engine search would be performed.
“We anticipate this technique to aid in applications for automated game playing, explainable AI, gameplay transfer, and game design tasks such as automated game design,” the team states in the paper.
However, there are some limitations to the AI in its current form. For one, the technique that is currently in place doesn’t take player death or level transitions into account, but the team hopes to address this issue in a future study.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.