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Musk’s OpenAI will train artificial intelligence through video game ‘Universe’
Elon Musk’s OpenAI will introduce Universe, a virtual training ground aimed at teaching AI to play video games, use apps and even interact with websites. OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company backed by the Tesla founder and billionaire entrepreneur, defines Universe in a blog post as “a software platform for measuring and training an AI’s general intelligence across the world’s supply of games, websites and other applications.”
Put simply, Universe will provide a gym that allows AI agents to go beyond their specialized knowledge of an individual environment to something approaching common sense. “Any task a human can complete with a computer.” Using a VNC (Virtual Network Computing) remote desktop, it allows the AI to control the game or app using a virtual keyboard and mouse, and to see its output by analyzing the pixels displayed on the screen. It’s essentially an interface to the company’s Gym toolkit for developing reinforcement algorithms, a type of machine learning system.
“Our goal is to develop a single AI agent that can flexibly apply its past experience on Universe environments to quickly master unfamiliar, difficult environments, which would be a major step towards general intelligence,” OpenAI says. As an example, it points to success of Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo initiative, which defeated the world champion human Go player earlier this year. While that success was impressive, when faced with a different challenge, the agent would have to go back to square one and learn the new environment through millions of trial and error steps.
OpenAI hopes to expand the Reward Learning (RL) lessons learned in one environment so that an AI agent can build upon past experience to succeed in unfamiliar environments.
We're releasing Universe, a platform for measuring and training AI agents: https://t.co/bx7OjMDaJK
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) December 5, 2016
OpenAI says in its blog post, “Systems with general problem solving ability — something akin to human common sense, allowing an agent to rapidly solve a new hard task — remain out of reach. One apparent challenge is that our agents don’t carry their experience along with them to new tasks. In a standard training regime, we initialize agents from scratch and let them twitch randomly through tens of millions of trials as they learn to repeat actions that happen to lead to rewarding outcomes. If we are to make progress towards generally intelligent agents, we must allow them to experience a wide repertoire of tasks so they can develop world knowledge and problem solving strategies that can be efficiently reused in a new task.”
Prior to Universe, the largest RL resource consisted of 55 Atari games — the Atari Learning Environment, says The Register. But Universe will begin with the largest library of games and resources ever assembled. “Out of the box, Universe comprises thousands of games (e.g. Flash games, slither.io, Starcraft), browser-based tasks (e.g. form filling), and applications (e.g. fold.it),” the OpenAI blog claims. Gaming companies that are cooperating with OpenAI include Flash, Microsoft – OpenAI announced a strategic partnership with the Redmond-based software giant – EA, Valve, Nvidia, Zachtronics, Wolfram, and others.
Universe is about more than gaming. It’s main focus is on training AI agents to complete common online tasks with speed and accuracy. “Today, our agents are mostly learning to interact with common user interface elements like buttons, lists and sliders, but in the future they could complete complex tasks, such as looking up things they don’t know on the internet, managing your email or calendar, completing Khan Academy lessons, or working on Amazon Mechanical Turk and CrowdFlower tasks.”
The OpenAI blog post introducing Universe gives a long and detailed accounting of how Universe was created and what it hopes to accomplish. At the end, it provides a number of ways that companies and individuals can contribute to the process. It’s fascinating reading for anyone interested in what the future of computing is likely to be.
There is also a darker side to artificial intelligence, which Elon Musk refers to as “summoning the Devil.” As The Register suggests, “While making software smarter may appeal to researchers, society as a whole appears to be increasingly unnerved by the prospect. Beyond the speculative fears about malevolent AI and more realistic concerns about the automation of military weaponry, companies and individuals already have trouble dealing with automated forms of interaction.”
One area of concern is that AI agents may one day be able to reactivate themselves after being shut down by human controllers. What was once the stuff of science fiction such as Minority Report and I, Robot could one day become all too real.
OpenAI Universe has been open-sourced on Github for those that may be interested in testing their own video game bot. We’ve included a video below showing OpenAI in action.
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Tesla Robotaxi has a highly-requested hardware feature not available on typical Model Ys
These camera washers are crucial for keeping the operation going, as they are the sole way Teslas operate autonomously. The cameras act as eyes for the car to drive, recognize speed limit and traffic signs, and travel safely.
Tesla Robotaxi has a highly-requested hardware feature that is not available on typical Model Ys that people like you and me bring home after we buy them. The feature is something that many have been wanting for years, especially after the company adopted a vision-only approach to self-driving.
After Tesla launched driverless Robotaxi rides to the public earlier this week in Austin, people have been traveling to the Lone Star State in an effort to hopefully snag a ride from one of the few vehicles in the fleet that are now no longer required to have Safety Monitors present.
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Although only a few of those completely driverless rides are available, there have been some new things seen on these cars that are additions from regular Model Ys, including the presence of one new feature: camera washers.
With the Model Y, there has been a front camera washer, but the other exterior “eyes” have been void of any solution for this. For now, owners are required to clean them manually.
In Austin, Tesla is doing things differently. It is now utilizing camera washers on the side repeater and rear bumper cameras, which will keep the cameras clean and keep operation as smooth and as uninterrupted as possible:
🚨 Tesla looks to have installed Camera Washers on the side repeater cameras on Robotaxis in Austin
pic.twitter.com/xemRtDtlRR— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 23, 2026
Rear Camera Washer on Tesla Robotaxi pic.twitter.com/P9hgGStHmV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 24, 2026
These camera washers are crucial for keeping the operation going, as they are the sole way Teslas operate autonomously. The cameras act as eyes for the car to drive, recognize speed limit and traffic signs, and travel safely.
This is the first time we are seeing them, so it seems as if Safety Monitors might have been responsible for keeping the lenses clean and unobstructed previously.
However, as Tesla transitions to a fully autonomous self-driving suite and Robotaxi expands to more vehicles in the Robotaxi fleet, it needed to find a way to clean the cameras without any manual intervention, at least for a short period, until they can return for interior and exterior washing.
Tesla made a dramatic change to the Online Design Studio to show its plans for Full Self-Driving, a major part of the company’s plans moving forward, as CEO Elon Musk has been extremely clear on the direction moving forward.
With Tesla taking a stand and removing the ability to purchase Full Self-Driving outright next month, it is already taking steps to initiate that with owners and potential buyers.
On Thursday night, the company updated its Online Design Studio to reflect that in a new move that now lists the three purchase options that are currently available: Monthly Subscription, One-Time Purchase, or Add Later:
🚨 Check out the change Tesla made to its Online Design Studio:
It now lists the Monthly Subscription as an option for Full Self-Driving
It also shows the outright purchase option as expiring on February 14 pic.twitter.com/pM6Svmyy8d
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 23, 2026
This change replaces the former option for purchasing Full Self-Driving at the time of purchase, which was a simple and single box to purchase the suite outright. Subscriptions were activated through the vehicle exclusively.
However, with Musk announcing that Tesla would soon remove the outright purchase option, it is clearer than ever that the Subscription plan is where the company is headed.
The removal of the outright purchase option has been a polarizing topic among the Tesla community, especially considering that there are many people who are concerned about potential price increases or have been saving to purchase it for $8,000.
This would bring an end to the ability to pay for it once and never have to pay for it again. With the Subscription strategy, things are definitely going to change, and if people are paying for their cars monthly, it will essentially add $100 per month to their payment, pricing some people out. The price will increase as well, as Musk said on Thursday, as it improves in functionality.
I should also mention that the $99/month for supervised FSD will rise as FSD’s capabilities improve.
The massive value jump is when you can be on your phone or sleeping for the entire ride (unsupervised FSD). https://t.co/YDKhXN3aaG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 23, 2026
Those skeptics have grown concerned that this will actually lower the take rate of Full Self-Driving. While it is understandable that FSD would increase in price as the capabilities improve, there are arguments for a tiered system that would allow owners to pay for features that they appreciate and can afford, which would help with data accumulation for the company.
Musk’s new compensation package also would require Tesla to have 10 million active FSD subscriptions, but people are not sure if this will move the needle in the correct direction. If Tesla can potentially offer a cheaper alternative that is not quite unsupervised, things could improve in terms of the number of owners who pay for it.
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Tesla Model S completes first ever FSD Cannonball Run with zero interventions
The coast-to-coast drive marked the first time Tesla’s FSD system completed the iconic, 3,000-mile route end to end with no interventions.
A Tesla Model S has completed the first-ever full Cannonball Run using Full Self-Driving (FSD), traveling from Los Angeles to New York with zero interventions. The coast-to-coast drive marked the first time Tesla’s FSD system completed the iconic, 3,000-mile route end to end, fulfilling a long-discussed benchmark for autonomy.
A full FSD Cannonball Run
As per a report from The Drive, a 2024 Tesla Model S with AI4 and FSD v14.2.2.3 completed the 3,081-mile trip from Redondo Beach in Los Angeles to midtown Manhattan in New York City. The drive was completed by Alex Roy, a former automotive journalist and investor, along with a small team of autonomy experts.
Roy said FSD handled all driving tasks for the entirety of the route, including highway cruising, lane changes, navigation, and adverse weather conditions. The trip took a total of 58 hours and 22 minutes at an average speed of 64 mph, and about 10 hours were spent charging the vehicle. In later comments, Roy noted that he and his team cleaned out the Model S’ cameras during their stops to keep FSD’s performance optimal.
History made
The historic trip was quite impressive, considering that the journey was in the middle of winter. This meant that FSD didn’t just deal with other cars on the road. The vehicle also had to handle extreme cold, snow, ice, slush, and rain.
As per Roy in a post on X, FSD performed so well during the trip that the journey would have been completed faster if the Model S did not have people onboard. “Elon Musk was right. Once an autonomous vehicle is mature, most human input is error. A comedy of human errors added hours and hundreds of miles, but FSD stunned us with its consistent and comfortable behavior,” Roy wrote in a post on X.
Roy’s comments are quite notable as he has previously attempted Cannonball Runs using FSD on December 2024 and February 2025. Neither were zero intervention drives.
Tesla Robotaxi has a highly-requested hardware feature not available on typical Model Ys
Tesla makes big Full Self-Driving change to reflect future plans
