What if programming a video-game AI could use an algorithm to figure things out for itself, extrapolating from a few decisions made by players — and even reuse those lessons from one game to the next?

”Robotany,” a game prototype from the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, wants to answer those questions. Set in a garden, the game features small, robot-like creatures that take care of plants.

The player manipulates graphs of the robots’ three sensory inputs — three overlapping AIs — and these manipulations teach the AIs how to direct characters in new situations.

In related news, AI Challenge, sponsored by Google, lets non-programmers create a computer program (in any language) that controls a colony of ants that fight against other colonies for domination.