Saturday, September 30, 2017

Results and Evaluation for Gradual Learning Round of the General AI Challenge


SUMMARY:
  • We have finished the first round of the General AI Challenge focusing on gradual learning
  • There were no winners but we awarded $7000 of prizes to reward the top four efforts
  • We will continue the gradual learning round in 2018 and are launching Round 2: Race Avoidance in November 2017


We have reached a big milestone having completed the first Gradual Learning round of the General AI Challenge. Firstly, I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone involved in the round: all participants, our jury and advisors, our 15 main partners (see below) and everyone who helped.

GoodAI launched the General AI Challenge in February 2017, with the aim of using citizen science to tackle crucial research problems in human-level AI development.

The first round of the Challenge asked participants to create AI agents capable of gradual learning (building new knowledge on top of previously learned skills and reapplying existing skills to learn how to solve new problems more efficiently), one of the keys to solving general AI.

We had over 500 people from 56 countries registered for the 1st round of the General AI Challenge from February till August 2017, and we received 13 submissions competing for the main, quantitative prize (“best gradually learning AI agent”) and for the qualitative (“best idea”) prize.

To compete for quantitative prize, AI agents had to pass an evaluation curriculum of tasks, that we designed specifically to test the gradual learning capability. Since none of the submitted AI agents were able to solve the entire evaluation curriculum, and the jury concluded that more work is required to demonstrate future potential of submitted designs, the jury chose no winner.

However, to encourage further work on gradual learning and to reward the participants for their considerable efforts, we decided to split the 2nd prize in “best idea” category ($7000) among the four finalists. Four shortlisted solutions were closely comparable, but the finalist who received most points from the judges was also awarded a GEFORCE GTX 1080 GPU - the special prize from our Challenge partner NVIDIA.


I was particularly impressed at the diversity on display and the determination of our participants. The top four awarded finalists, as chosen by our jury, are:


Dan Barry: A former NASA astronaut and a veteran of three space flights, four spacewalks and two trips to the International Space Station. He retired from NASA in 2005 and started his own company, Denbar Robotics, that focuses on smart robots and artificial intelligence interfaces, concentrating on assistive devices for people with disabilities. In 2011 he co-founded Fellow Robots, a company that provides robots for retail settings. He has ten patents, over 50 articles in scientific journals and has served on two scientific journal editorial boards.


Andrés del Campo Novales: AI hobbyist passionate about the idea of a general AI. He is a Software Engineer with 15 years of professional experience. He has been working for Microsoft in Denmark for the last 11 years in business applications. Andrés studied computer science & engineering at Córdoba and Málaga. He created a chatbot that could learn conversation patterns, context and numerical systems.
Andreas Ipp: Andreas Ipp works as a research fellow at the TU Wien where he obtained his habilitation in the field of theoretical physics. His current research is focused on simulating the production of the quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion colliders like the LHC in CERN. After obtaining his PhD, he had postdoctoral fellow positions in Italy and at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Since his return to TU Wien, he is involved in teaching activities, including lecturing on quantum electrodynamics. Apart from his scientific achievements, he founded the choir of the TU Wien a few years ago, which successfully participates at international choir competitions.

Susumu Katayama: Assistant professor at the University of Miyazaki in Japan, inventor of the MagicHaskeller inductive functional programming system. He has been working on inductive functional programming (IFP) for fifteen years. His research goal is to realize a human-level AI based on IFP.








It’s great to see our participants coming from such different walks of life and I wonder if Dan Barry has every played our Space Engineers! :-)

I was also inspired by the passion of our participants. Andrés del Campo Novales only learnt about the competition a couple of months ago. However, this didn’t stop him putting in over 150 hours during the weekend and in the evenings.

Next steps


We have listened to the feedback from participants, and eagerness of our finalists to continue their work and improve on the quantitative challenge. Therefore, we have decided we will continue the gradual learning round of the Challenge in 2018.

In the meantime you can get involved in the second round of the General AI Challenge which will launch in November 2017 and will focus on AI Race avoidance. With the increasing rate of progress made in the AI field, developers might race towards being the first to achieve general AI and might neglect either safety procedures or agreements with other stakeholders for the sake of first mover advantage. Participants will be asked to come up with a proposal of what practical steps can be taken to avoid the pitfalls of the AI race and advance the development of beneficial general AI.

Thank you for reading!

Marek Rosa
CEO, Founder, Keen Software House
CEO, CTO, GoodAI
:-)

For more news:
General AI Challenge: www.general-ai-challenge.org
AI Roadmap Institute: www.roadmapinstitute.org
Space Engineers: www.spaceengineersgame.com
Medieval Engineers: www.medievalengineers.com

Personal bio: Marek Rosa is the CEO and CTO of GoodAI, a general artificial intelligence R&D company, and the CEO and founder of Keen Software House, an independent game development studio best known for their best-seller Space Engineers (2mil+ copies sold). Both companies are based in Prague, Czech Republic. Marek has been interested in artificial intelligence since childhood. Marek started his career as a programmer but later transitioned to a leadership role. After the success of the Keen Software House titles, Marek was able to personally fund GoodAI, his new general AI research company building human-level artificial intelligence, with $10mil. GoodAI started in January 2014 and has grown to an international team of 20 researchers.









Monday, September 25, 2017

Space Engineers Skins Sale (Concluded)


SUMMARY:
  • 6 skin sets available for purchase
  • Sale starts September 25, only open for a few days
  • Store option has been requested by players
  • Rules of screenshot competition are not changing


This sale has now ended. Thank you for your feedback and we hope
you enjoy your newly acquired skins!

Hello Engineers!

Today we’re excited to announce a special limited-time sale for some select skins you’ve been asking for! Starting on Monday, September 25, you will be able to purchase six skin sets. This sale will only last for a few days, so make sure to check it out on Steam Item Store (this sale has now ended) before it’s too late!

The skins up for sale are:
  • Graffiti
  • Police
  • Prisoner
  • Skeleton
  • Digi Camo
  • Lava

We’ve had lots of requests from players asking for a way to simply purchase skins instead of spending time chasing down containers to find those elusive badger boots. In light of the ongoing screenshot competition we’ve decided to not sell all the skin sets, instead we’ve selected some of the more popular mid-tier sets for you to purchase.


If you’re only missing one or two pieces from a suit, you can buy those separately, but if you buy all eight pieces at once, you get a special bundle discount!

If you have questions about the skin system, see my blog post about skins for more info. We addressed some of the most common questions and concerns in this post when we released skins.

The rules for the screenshot competition haven’t changed, and users who have purchased skins won’t be judged any differently. We are judging the screenshots based on style, composition, and creativity, not which skin you bought. So keep sending in screenshots whether you bought your skin from the workshop or earned it the hard way. All of us at Keen love seeing the amazing creativity coming from our community, so keep it coming!


Space Engineers is still in development. Everything in the game is subject to change.

Thank you for reading!

Marek Rosa
CEO and Founder of Keen Software House
CEO, CTO of GoodAI

For more news:
Space Engineers: www.spaceengineersgame.com
Medieval Engineers: www.medievalengineers.com
General AI Challenge: www.general-ai-challenge.org
AI Roadmap Institute: www.roadmapinstitute.org
GoodAI: www.goodai.com
Keen Software House: www.keenswh.com

Personal bio:

Marek Rosa is the CEO and CTO of GoodAI, a general artificial intelligence R&D company, and the CEO and founder of Keen Software House, an independent game development studio best known for their best-seller Space Engineers (2mil+ copies sold). Both companies are based in Prague, Czech Republic.
Marek has been interested in artificial intelligence since childhood. Marek started his career as a programmer but later transitioned to a leadership role. After the success of the Keen Software House titles, Marek was able to personally fund GoodAI, his new general AI research company building human-level artificial intelligence, with $10mil.

GoodAI started in January 2014 and has grown to an international team of 20 researchers.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Screenshot & Loading Screen Competition



SUMMARY:
  • Screenshot competition starting today, 14/09/2017 and ending on 01/10/2017
  • Entries must follow Marek's style guide. Read more here.
  • 4 categories: Orginal Space Engineers Scenes, Skins, Container Capture and Epicness
  • Double skin drop rate for duration of competition
  • Last chance to recieve the "Veteran" skin set


Hello Engineers! We are launching a screenshot competition today with a number of different categories. The prizes include the winners’ choice of complete skin sets, and some screenshots may be added to the official loading screens or even printed on canvas and displayed in the KeenSWH offices!

For the duration of this contest, which will end on October 1st, we will be doubling the drop rate of skins giving you a better chance of finding some of the rarer ones. The next couple of weeks will also be your last opportunity to receive the veteran skin set as part of our special promotion for supporters up to this point so make sure that you load up the game at least once to have that set added to your collection.

Across all categories, we want you to capture the original visual styling and feeling of Space Engineers. Please see my latest blog post for more details and advice on how to achieve this original look that we are looking for. It's worth mentioning that we are working internally to get back to this visual style, both in-game and in marketing/public presentation.

General Info:


  • Each player can submit 1 screenshot per category
  • Deadline for submissions is 1st October 2017
  • Tasteful manipulation and enhancement of photos through editing software like Photoshop and gimp are allowed, as long as the source of the picture was an in-game screenshot.
  • Across all categories, we will be looking at the composition, colors, story and uniqueness of the shot.
  • Screenshots must have a minimum resolution of 1080p but the higher the better! Use the guide below to capture screenshots in a higher resolution than your monitor. 4K and above would be great!
  • Winners of each category will get to choose complete skin sets of their choice.
    • 1st Place: 3 Skin Sets
    • 2nd Place: 2 Skin Sets
    • 3rd Place: 1 Skin Set
  • Some winners may have their images added as official loading screen or printed onto canvas and used in the KeenSWH offices!
  • By entering the contest, you agree to follow all rules of the contest. If you don't submit according to the rules, you can be disqualified.
  • All entries of the contest become the property of Keen Software House. This means we have the right to use and modify your entries in our game, on social media, on our websites, etc.
  • We reserve the right to modify, cancel, or postpone the contest for any reason.

How to capture your screenshots in higher resolutions than your monitor:

Space Engineers can be setup so that it's possible to capture higher resolution screenshots than your monitor's supported resolution. Follow this guide:
  • Locate SpaceEngineers.cfg in your user Application Data folder.(C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers)
  • Modify ScreenshotSizeMultiplier. Result screenshot size is calculated as resolution in the game multiplied by ScreenshotSizeMultiplier.
  • Make a screenshot in the game (F4 by default).
  • If the screenshot is too big, it is cut into several fragments. These are to be combined in any image editing application.
<item>
<Key>ScreenshotSizeMultiplier</Key>
<Value>1</Value>
</item>

Keep in mind that this multiplies your current resolution and aspect ratio. If your monitor doesn’t support 16:9, you may see better results by changing to a lower resolution in windowed mode.

How to submit your screenshot:

  • After taking your screenshot(s), upload it to an image sharer (eg. imgur)
  • Send the link with your screenshot(s) to our email at press@keenswh.com with the subject line “Screenshot competition”. Please also clearly state which category the screenshots you submit belong in and include a link to your Steam profile.

The Categories:
Original Space Engineers Scenes

The first category is for people who think they can recreate the scenes from the initial release in the current build of Space Engineers. You can find most of the officially published screenshots from October 2013 here:

http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/pictures.html

They don’t necessarily have to look exactly the same as the originals but they must follow the same visual style rules or tell a similar story.

Old.png

Skins

The second category is focused on the use of the different skins and skin combinations. There must be at least one character clearly visible in the scene. We will be looking for images that tell some kind of story and/or have an interesting backdrop, so get your friends together and make something crazy and unique!


Container Capture

The third category is all about showing the exact moment of capturing a container. This is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate engineering prowess with various creations designed for the capture/storage/deconstruction of these containers. Custom containers can be created as long as they follow a similar design to vanilla ones e.g. they must have a parachute hatch, buttons and not be too big.

Remember, skin drop rates are doubled while this competition is running, so get out there and capture some crates!


Epicness

This final category is about creativity! The only rule is to follow the guidelines of my style guide, read more here. You could design a fleet, a planet base, or even just show some epic destruction! We’re always blown away by the creativity of our players, so show us what you can do with my vision!


Space Engineers is still in development. Everything in the game is subject to change.


Thank you for reading and we look forward to seeing what you create!

Marek Rosa
CEO and Founder of Keen Software House
CEO, CTO of GoodAI


For more news:
Space Engineers: www.spaceengineersgame.com
Medieval Engineers: www.medievalengineers.com
General AI Challenge: www.general-ai-challenge.org
AI Roadmap Institute: www.roadmapinstitute.org
GoodAI: www.goodai.com
Keen Software House: www.keenswh.com


Personal bio:

Marek Rosa is the CEO and CTO of GoodAI, a general artificial intelligence R&D company, and the CEO and founder of Keen Software House, an independent game development studio best known for their best-seller Space Engineers (2mil+ copies sold). Both companies are based in Prague, Czech Republic. 
Marek has been interested in artificial intelligence since childhood. Marek started his career as a programmer but later transitioned to a leadership role. After the success of the Keen Software House titles, Marek was able to personally fund GoodAI, his new general AI research company building human-level artificial intelligence, with $10mil. 

GoodAI started in January 2014 and has grown to an international team of 20 researchers.

My vision for the visual style of Space Engineers



SUMMARY:
  • Primary Colors
  • Skybox Background
  • Exterior Art Style for Ships and Constructions
  • Lights
  • Color Scheme


Old.png
Today’s blog post is based on an internal document which we are using to maintain the signature visual style of Space Engineers from October 2013. Currently, we are working towards making the game’s visuals and marketing closer to that of the original release. This post outlines the key elements of my vision for the visual style of Space Engineers, some of which are already present but there’s others that we still need to focus on.
You can use this information to help you create screenshots for our latest competition which should follow this signature styling. For more details on the competition, click here. This document could also prove useful when designing campaigns, scenarios and mods or even making videos.

Primary Colors

One of the main factors making Space Engineers universe unique, is its color palette. And while in-game world can consist of wide variety of all possible colors, major elements (be it ships/ buildings/structures etc) must stay true to this original color scheme. For original Space Engineers, these are the Primary colors:


       
       009.jpg

Skybox Background

There are also some general rules to maintain the unique look and feel of Space Engineers universe in outer space environment.

Color:

In terms of color, we want to have the surrounding skybox to be mostly of monochrome colors. Almost grayscale with a little bit of color tint.

Brightness:

We are trying to avoid super black areas. Even the darkest skybox parts must have some bright values. This is done to make all foreground elements really stand out and be prominent.
Note: this doesn’t mean there won’t be total dark when you enter an enclosed interior area.

Texture pattern:

Since Space Engineers is all about mining and engineering, surrounding texture pattern must be a kind of mixture of massive dust clusters and a bit of nebulas scattered all around. Also, all elements in the skybox texture must be shaded in rather diffuse, ambient manner without any hint of direct light source like sun or any other. This is done to avoid visual lighting/shadowing conflicts between moving in-game sun and static Skybox elements.
Check the image below:
              SpaceEngineers_2014-02-06-23-39-39-489_FinalScreen.png              
One of the rules for visuals of Space Engineers is to avoid placing elements like asteroids or any other objects in skybox texture which would require natural reaction to lighting from in-game sun.


                     

Exterior Art Style of Ships and Constructions
To maintain consistency and keep general art style of all main ships and structures, all of these elements must contain combination of one or two primary color stripes (doesn’t need to be white only) as shown in the images below.

         
Old.png          

There are some exceptional ships that don’t require the white-stripe pattern.

       Reference Videos
You can see some videos as a reference for the original visuals:

Space Engineers - "Survival Mode" Tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5PgmvtRHZU


Lights
The lights are also very important for our in-game experience. We’re trying to use only white colored light, but if there is some color needed, we try to do it very subtly.
We don’t want to have too many colors in Space Engineers footage - see the pics above, they usually have 3-5 colors maximum.



Color Scheme
We try to stick to only one color scheme per setting/environment mostly. It means no multiple, chaotic color combinations in one setting/environment/room. As a general rule of thumb: Use 80/20% or even 90/10% combination when creating lighting scenarios for settings. For example, when lighting a big interior - 80/90% of lights should be of the same color, while you can have some variations/combinations with other colors to portray needed visual in-game guides.

Space Engineers is still in development. Everything in the game is subject to change.

Thank you for reading!

Marek Rosa
CEO and Founder of Keen Software House
CEO, CTO of GoodAI


For more news:
Space Engineers: www.spaceengineersgame.com
Medieval Engineers: www.medievalengineers.com
General AI Challenge: www.general-ai-challenge.org
AI Roadmap Institute: www.roadmapinstitute.org
GoodAI: www.goodai.com
Keen Software House: www.keenswh.com


Personal bio:

Marek Rosa is the CEO and CTO of GoodAI, a general artificial intelligence R&D company, and the CEO and founder of Keen Software House, an independent game development studio best known for their best-seller Space Engineers (2mil+ copies sold). Both companies are based in Prague, Czech Republic. 
Marek has been interested in artificial intelligence since childhood. Marek started his career as a programmer but later transitioned to a leadership role. After the success of the Keen Software House titles, Marek was able to personally fund GoodAI, his new general AI research company building human-level artificial intelligence, with $10mil. 

GoodAI started in January 2014 and has grown to an international team of 20 researchers.