[ml] AI competition: play Mario Brothers

[Josh Myer]

For the people who have done some AI/ML work before: there's a
competition on to build systems to play a version of Super Mario
Brothers.

Here's the fluffier Popular Science piece:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/humans-challenge-ai-game-mario-bros

And a less fluffy New Scientist piece, with actual links:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17560-race-is-on-to-evolve-the-ultimate-mario.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news


I'd be kind of interested to hack on this, but there's no way I could
help get something serious done by either deadline.  Either way, it's
a really fun thing to think about, and might be fun to hack at.

Is anybody else excited about this, and have concrete ideas of how to
start tackling the problem?  (Sorry, I'd rather not try to help
newbies along too much in this process, as it's, err, feckin' hard =)
-- 
Josh Myer   650.248.3796
  josh at joshisanerd.com