At DeepMind, a Google subsidiary based in Cambridge, England, researchers have built artificial intelligence software that’s so adept at these classic games, it can sometimes beat a human player—and a professional, at that. This may seem like a frivolous, if intriguing, pursuit. But it’s a step toward something bigger. If a machine can learn to navigate the digital world of a video game, Google says, it eventually could learn to navigate the real world, too. Today, this AI can play Space Invaders. Tomorrow, it could control the robots that will build our gadgets and toys, and the autonomous cars that will drive from place to place entirely on their own

Google isn’t the only one with this vision of AI leaping from games to reality. Backed by $3.3 million in funding from big names like Peter Thiel and Jerry Yang, a new startup called Osaro is pushing in the same direction. In an echo of DeepMind, Osaro has built an AI engine that can play classic games. But the company’s ultimate aim is to offer this technology as a way of driving the next generation of robots used in warehouses and factories. Much like humans, it gets better through practice. “Think about kids. They learn a lot through trial and error,” says Osaro founder and CEO Itamar Arel. “They come to understand what maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain.”