--- title: These Tech Heroes Have Officially Conquered Ms. Pac-Man description: Microsoft's Maluuba have figured out how to max out the classic Atari game — but it involves artificial intelligence, of course. canonical: https://time.com/4819067/microsoft-pac-man-maluuba/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-06-14T21:53:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:44:31.390Z og:title: These Tech Heroes Have Officially Conquered Ms. Pac-Man og:description: They used artificial intelligence, of course og:url: https://time.com/4819067/microsoft-pac-man-maluuba/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: These Tech Heroes Have Officially Conquered Ms. Pac-Man twitter:description: They used artificial intelligence, of course twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Robots to Humans: You Lose. 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Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically.  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Jun 14, 2017 9:53 PM UTC  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Jun 14, 2017 9:53 PM UTC A group of tech superheroes — also known as researchers at recent [Microsoft](http://time.com/4818116/microsoft-surface-laptop-review/) acquisition Maluuba — have achieved the seeming impossible, and reached the maximum possible score on classic 1980s Atari game [Ms. Pac-Man.](http://time.com/4721103/april-fools-day-google-maps-ms-pac-man/) “No human or AI has ever achieved this score because of the complexity of the game and availability of limited lives,” they state in voiceover on a video shared on YouTube Wednesday. Casual. Maluuba, a startup acquired by the tech giant, specializes in artificial intelligence, so perhaps it only makes sense that they would be capable of applying their technical expertise to this all-important gaming quandary. The key is their “advanced reinforcement learning mechanism,” as they explain in the video, which enables their AI to reach all the way to 999,999 — the maximum possible score, and four times the highest recorded reached by any human player. “We performed well on the game by breaking it into many small problems, with a separate reinforcement learning agent for each problem,” they note. From ghosts to fruit, each “problem” has an “agent” with a “reward function,” meaning they’ve broken down the big decision-making of the overall game play into tiny decision-making tasks. That concept has legs way beyond arcade games, too, from financial models to sales funnels. Confused? 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