<story><title>Minecraft to run artificial intelligence experiments</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35778288</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikegerwitz</author><text>I am personally very uncomfortable with introducing children to programming using Minecraft---sure, it has some benefits, but it&amp;#x27;s teaching them to embrace a proprietary platform that tells them that they cannot study or modify the source code.  Support for modding does not count.  What children need to be introduced to is software and an operating system where you can &amp;quot;mod&amp;quot; _everything_, and expect to be able to!  _That_ is a practical skill and a powerful foundation.&lt;p&gt;Children should be encouraged to adopt free software.  Replacements like Minetest exist, and they also have a strong modding community.  I&amp;#x27;d recommend people instead invest their time creating excellent mods for Minetest and bring it up to par with the features of Minecraft.  I will be introducing my son to Minetest soon (he&amp;#x27;s four) before he gets into Kindergarten and his peers start talking about Minecraft and pressure him into a world of proprietary software.  I would rather him talk to his friends about Minetest and encourage them to play with him.&lt;p&gt;There are also many other projects that aim to teach children programming.&lt;p&gt;Proprietary software is incompatible with education.  rms has talked at length about these issues; I encourage others to consider his perspective:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gnu.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;education.en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gnu.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;education.en.html&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gnu.org&amp;#x2F;philosophy&amp;#x2F;free-software-even-more-important.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gnu.org&amp;#x2F;philosophy&amp;#x2F;free-software-even-more-important...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>kriro</author><text>The fact that they want to use it as a teaching platform of sorts has very exciting implications. Minecraft is really huge with kids and that&amp;#x27;s an excellent way of getting more young people interested in AI and programming in general.
To this day I think the Berkeley intro to AI class[1] on edx is the best I&amp;#x27;ve seen because it uses Pacman as the running example which makes everything more approachable.
It would probably be interesting to turn some of the examples from AIAMA into Minecraft examples as well.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.edx.org&amp;#x2F;course&amp;#x2F;artificial-intelligence-uc-berkeleyx-cs188-1x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.edx.org&amp;#x2F;course&amp;#x2F;artificial-intelligence-uc-berkel...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>panglott</author><text>The most important thing for education is simply getting the attention of the kids. Once you have their attention, you can get them to tinker and play and learn. But until you actually have their attention, it&amp;#x27;s all &amp;quot;you can lead a horse to water but you can&amp;#x27;t make them drink.&amp;quot; Free software is important, but explicating GNU orthodoxy to kids is about the worst possible way to actually get them out there playing with technology.</text></comment>
<story><title>Minecraft to run artificial intelligence experiments</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35778288</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikegerwitz</author><text>I am personally very uncomfortable with introducing children to programming using Minecraft---sure, it has some benefits, but it&amp;#x27;s teaching them to embrace a proprietary platform that tells them that they cannot study or modify the source code.  Support for modding does not count.  What children need to be introduced to is software and an operating system where you can &amp;quot;mod&amp;quot; _everything_, and expect to be able to!  _That_ is a practical skill and a powerful foundation.&lt;p&gt;Children should be encouraged to adopt free software.  Replacements like Minetest exist, and they also have a strong modding community.  I&amp;#x27;d recommend people instead invest their time creating excellent mods for Minetest and bring it up to par with the features of Minecraft.  I will be introducing my son to Minetest soon (he&amp;#x27;s four) before he gets into Kindergarten and his peers start talking about Minecraft and pressure him into a world of proprietary software.  I would rather him talk to his friends about Minetest and encourage them to play with him.&lt;p&gt;There are also many other projects that aim to teach children programming.&lt;p&gt;Proprietary software is incompatible with education.  rms has talked at length about these issues; I encourage others to consider his perspective:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gnu.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;education.en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gnu.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;education.en.html&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gnu.org&amp;#x2F;philosophy&amp;#x2F;free-software-even-more-important.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gnu.org&amp;#x2F;philosophy&amp;#x2F;free-software-even-more-important...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>kriro</author><text>The fact that they want to use it as a teaching platform of sorts has very exciting implications. Minecraft is really huge with kids and that&amp;#x27;s an excellent way of getting more young people interested in AI and programming in general.
To this day I think the Berkeley intro to AI class[1] on edx is the best I&amp;#x27;ve seen because it uses Pacman as the running example which makes everything more approachable.
It would probably be interesting to turn some of the examples from AIAMA into Minecraft examples as well.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.edx.org&amp;#x2F;course&amp;#x2F;artificial-intelligence-uc-berkeleyx-cs188-1x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.edx.org&amp;#x2F;course&amp;#x2F;artificial-intelligence-uc-berkel...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hacker_9</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;ve missed the point entirely here. Minecraft is a popular game that kids would play anyway, so if they can involve the game in an educational sense then it&amp;#x27;s a win win.</text></comment>