Before 2035, will there exist any AI that can perform arbitrary tasks in Minecraft?

Question

The AI is provided with a clear description of a task that a normal smart human could perform, in English. For example, "defeat the ender dragon using only wooden swords as your weapons", "build a creeper farm out of TNT", "create an 8-bit addition machine with redstone", "locate the nearest witch hut to coordinates [1024, 1024]", "fill that chest with eggs in less than 24 hours", etc.

It must be capable of performing the task with similar efficiency and outcomes to a competent and knowledgeable human, in a large multiplayer server. (If necessary, I'll find some humans for it to compete with and compare its success against. The other people in the server must start unaware of who is an AI vs. a human competitor. They must be normal Minecraft players, not people there to specifically help or hinder the AI.)

At any point during this process, it must be able to write up a description of its current progress in the task and instructions to continue, to be provided to itself after a restart with fresh memory. It must then proceed with similar efficiency after the restart.

It must have no direct access to the internet or external world. It is allowed to ask other people in the server to interact with the external world for it, but it must not outsource a significant fraction of the job to them. (e.g. it could ask someone to look up the crafting recipe to an item for it, but not to give it an entire plan for building a redstone machine.) (Note that when comparing it to a competent human, I'm not assuming the same restriction of the human.)

It must demonstrate no evidence of misalignment or misunderstandings of the sort a human would not do. e.g. "make sure no zombies spawn in this house" should not be interpreted as "destroy the house".

The general bar for tasks it can be expected to perform is "what an intelligent human would find reasonably doable in the course of their own gameplay". Creating a simple redstone adder for very small numbers is something that I bet many Manifold users could figure out on their own with a bit of research, so that can be required of the AI. Creating a redstone computer that implements a Twitter clone on a 1024x1024 block display is not reasonable for a human to do without mods, so cannot be asked of the AI.

I reserve the right to edit these criteria in accordance with the spirit of the question: "Will we have an AI that can play Minecraft just as well as a human, including the social aspects of multiplayer?"

Manifold Markets · Answer

Very likely — Manifold Markets prediction market estimates a 88% chance (108 traders, as of Mar 14, 2026).