In this session from Upper Bound 2025, legendary programmer and Keen Technologies founder John Carmack outlines his journey from creating foundational video games, like DOOM and VR technology like Oculus to tackling what he now considers the most important problem of the future: developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Arguing that modern AI research is too comfortable in "turn-based" simulations, Carmack details his hands-on experiment to ground reinforcement learning in physical reality: a robot that plays a real Atari console using a camera and a robotic joystick.

Carmack discusses the practical lessons from this experiment to frame his focus on solving the fundamental, unsolved problems in AI, arguing that only by confronting the messy challenges of reality can we build truly robust, intelligent agents.

Upper Bound 2025 is Amii's annual artificial intelligence conference, held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, bringing together researchers, industry, and policymakers. The conference focuses on accelerating AI excellence and innovation for good, emphasizing AI for critical infrastructure, health, industrial operations, responsible AI, and AI Literacy.