[ml] AI competition: play Mario Brothers

[Paul Oppenheim]

It'd be easy to make a state machine to do it, so I'm guessing that's 
off limits? This is actually pretty standard fare in games for AI 
players, is there any kind of limit on who can enter? I'm reading now, 
but missing the details...

Josh Myer wrote:
> 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 =)