What is SIMA, Google Deepmind’s new AI that can play video games with you
- March 18, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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What is SIMA, Google Deepmind’s new AI that can play video games with you
Subject: Science and tech
Section: Awareness in IT and computer
Context:
- Google DeepMind on March 13 revealed its latest AI gaming agent called SIMA or Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent, which can follow natural language instructions to perform tasks across video game environments.
More on news:
- SIMA points to a future of gaming where AI agents could play a key role.
- It also takes us a step closer to AI which can intelligently collaborate with humans not only in games but also in doing tasks in real-world environments.
- With an AI robot to help seniors beat loneliness and a fully autonomous AI software engineer released recently, the week has been a busy one for AI enthusiasts.
What is SIMA?
- AI research lab Google Deepmind describes SIMA as an AI Agent, which is different from AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google Gemini.
- AI models are trained on a vast data set and are limited when it comes to working on their own.
- On the other hand, an AI Agent can process data and take action themselves.
- SIMA can be called a generalist AI Agent that is capable of doing different kinds of tasks. It is like a virtual buddy who can understand and follow instructions in all sorts of virtual environments – from exploring mysterious dungeons to building lavish castles. It can accomplish tasks or solve challenges assigned to it.
- It is essentially a super-smart computer programme that can be thought of as a digital explorer, having the ability to understand what you want and help create it in the virtual world.
How does SIMA work?
- SIMA “understands” your commands as it has been trained to process human language. So when you ask it to build a castle or find the treasure chest, it understands exactly what these commands mean.
- One distinct feature of this AI Agent is that it is capable of learning and adapting.
- SIMA does this through the interactions it has with the user.
- The more you interact with SIMA, the smarter it gets by learning from its experiences and improves over time.
- Based on the current stage of AI development, it is a big feat for an AI system to be able to play even one game.
- This could potentially introduce more helpful AI agents for other environments.
How was SIMA trained?
- To expose the AI agent to different environments, Google Deepmind collaborated with eight game studios to test SIMA on nine different video games, including Teardown by Tuxedo Labs and No Man’s Sky by Hello Games.
- With every game, SIMA’s portfolio opened a new interactive world along with a range of skills for it to learn, such as simple navigation, menu use, mining resources, flying spaceships, etc.
- They also used four research environments, including one built with the cross-platform game engine Unity.
- This environment, called Construction Lab, required AI agents to build sculptures from building blocks.
- This exercise was done to test the agent’s object manipulation abilities and intuitive understanding of the physical world.