YOUR plucky blue box bounds over gaps and hops onto platforms, the pulsating red wall never more than half a screen behind. If it catches you, it is game over. Then the wall falls into a hole, you bounce on it and it is gone. This is Super Mario reimagined by artificial intelligence.
Matthew Guzdial and Mark Riedl at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have created a machine-learning system that has taught itself the basics of video game design by watching videos of people playing classic games, such as Super Mario, Kirby and Mega …