The machine was born in a sandbox. Stumbling for meaning, its five parents watched as it learned the rules of the world around it. Everything is built of cubes, which can be climbed one at a time. There is light, and there is darkness. "Up" has a meaning different from "down." The machine learned. The makers gave the machine a task: go up. And, eventually, the machine did just that, safely within the confines of its Minecraft world. Microsoft, which owns the wildly popular open-ended game, is using the setting as a laboratory for artificial intelligence. This summer, they're opening it up for everyone.

"We're looking for opportunities where we can really help accelerate the pace of artificial intelligence innovation in a way that is going to be very close to the real world, with real experiences and real data," said Evelyne Viegas, the director of artificial intelligence outreach at Microsoft Research. The AIX platform consists of a mod for the Java version and code that helps artificial intelligence agents sense and act within the Minecraft environment. The two components can run on Windows, Linux or Mac OS, and researchers can program their agents in any programming language they are comfortable with.