The development of artificial intelligence is one of the issues that have given more to talk about, since many see it as the possible end of human civilization. While there seems to be a long time before you have to worry that a machine will invade your home and impersonate your identity, it may not be long before I can win you in Super Mario Kart.
We say this because SethBling, speedrunner who is known for transforming Super Mario World into Flappy Bird, set to work to create MariFlow, an artificial intelligence that is already capable of achieving the gold medal in the 50cc category of most of the Classic glasses for SNES. The most interesting thing is that he documented the entire process on his Twitch channel, so you can see his achievement with your own eyes.
In a video he recently posted on his YouTube channel, SethBling explains that MariFlow is an artificial neural network that learned to play Super Mario Kart by watching the gameplay of its creator. That is to say, the objective of MariFlow is not to learn to play well, but to predict what SethBling would do in certain situations.
It is important to note that MariFlow is a recurrent neural network, so it is also able to remember certain actions, so SethBling recorded 15 hours of training data to improve the predictions of his artificial intelligence. In addition, he organized some interactive training sessions where in some moments he controlled the game and MariFlow did it in others, with the aim that she would be prepared for any obstacle.
While this type of artificial intelligence is far from matching the skills of the best Super Mario Kart riders, it is interesting to know the ways in which you can learn to play classic titles. You can learn more about it in the following video:
As you imagine, MariFlow is not the first artificial intelligence that learns to play video games. What we are referring to is that, in addition to there being AI able to beat some players of DOTA 2, there are others who can play some titles for NES.
And you, do you think that at some point MariFlow manages to win you in Super Mario Kart or is there nothing that can match your ability? Tell us in the comments.