People who worry about Things like Artificial Intelligence (AI) robots worry that one day the machines will realize they don’t need people to survive and annihilate us all. But the people over at DeepMind have a bigger problem with their AI robot as our friends at engadget pointed out: “It probably never occurred to anyone that, as soon as they discovered beer, Netflix and video games, that computers would ditch plans for world domination, drop out and get a job at the local gas station.”

Seems the folks at DeepMind wanted to see if the AI could learn to play video games without being taught. So they set it up with 2,600 Atari titles and let it go. They didn’t give it any instructions on how to play, but every time it did something right, it was rewarded with the electronic equivalent of a doggy treat. And you know what happened? It got really good at those games. So good, they want to teach it more complicated games like Pac-Man and StarCraft.

Every gamer knows those Things are totally addicting. If AI gets hooked on video games, we’ll never have to worry about it conquering the world. But it might crush you — and your friends — at Halo.

See you next week,
Bobby