Almost ten years ago, the online phenomenon “Twitch Plays Pokémon” convened over a million people to play Pokémon Red at the same time, with each player’s keystrokes registering as commands for the one pixelated avatar. Now, like a Magikarp growing into a Gyarados, the evolution of technology begs a new question: can AI play Pokémon? For the last few years, Seattle-based software engineer Peter Whidden has been training a reinforcement learning algorithm to navigate the classic first game of the Pokémon series – in that time, the AI has played more than 50,000 hours of the game.