That's what Microsoft's Project Malmo, formerly known as DNA Storage Project, is doing right now. Publicly unveiled today on the official Mojang blog, Project Malmo has just made its open source tools available to everyone today in an effort to help others help strengthen AI in various ways.

Mojang notes that Minecraft is the perfect way to educate AI when it comes to offering solutions to problems, sharpening spatial and temporal reasoning, and even collaboration. Project Malmo can offer diverse opportunities at teaching artificial intelligence software and act as a research tool that can test these theories as well.

If you're interested in seeing what Project Malmo has to offer in addition to testing it out for yourself, you can download the mod for the PC/Mac edition of Minecraft here. Knowledge of code is required, but don't let that scare you off, as Microsoft attests even novices should be able to jump in, and they're excited to see what everyone comes up with.