I had an Atari 2600 back in the day, and one of the game I played a whole a lot of was Ms. Pac-Man. I sucked at it. I got devoured by ghosts constantly, and never racked up much of a high score. Microsoft’s Maluuba AI on the other hand is a dominating Ms. Pac-Man player.
Maluuba taught its AI how to play the Atari VCS version of the game using multiple reinforcement learning algorithms, and the system was able to get the highest score possible in the game of 999,990. I have no idea why that is the highest score possible in the game. You’d think you could keep going if you wanted to.
Ms. Pac-Man is much harder to play than original Pac-Man, and is apparently not as predictable as the original game, making paths to victory more complex. Watch the video for more details, this is one serious arcade gaming AI.
[via Hot Hardware]