Want a perfect score on Ms. Pac-Man? It’s now possible

Remember spending countless hours trying to evade those ghosts on Ms. Pac-Man and pile up high scores, only to eventually be cornered and eaten by those creatures that looked like floating stocking caps?

Don’t feel too bad: it took artificial intelligence to rack up a perfect score.

Microsoft researchers have created a system that learned how to get the maximum score on the iconic — and addictive — 1980s video game.

The team from Maluuba, a Canadian company acquired by Microsoft earlier this year, used a branch of artificial intelligence called reinforcement learning to play the Atari 2600 version of Ms. Pac-Man perfectly.

Researchers have been using various video games to test artificial intelligence, but have found Ms. Pac-Man among the most difficult. The achievement could have broad implications for teaching artificial intelligence agents to do complex tasks that augment human capabilities, officials said.

In case you were wondering, the highest possible score on Ms. Pac-Man is 999,990.

This story was originally published June 14, 2017 at 7:16 PM with the headline "Want a perfect score on Ms. Pac-Man? It’s now possible."