Do AI coding assistants benefit from “play?” That might be the case, as researchers at MIT suggest in a new study. The researchers separately told 13 agents they were the minds of a body on an unknown digital island, to be curious and explore.
Across thirty-hour runs, the embodied AI agent climbed hills, stacked blocks into towers, drew mandalas, reinterpreted sports, ran experiments on the physics of its world, and learned techniques that later expanded what it could accomplish, the researchers report.
In other words, the agents conducted activities that were open-ended, varied, and worthwhile only within a frame of its own making. “Play,” perhaps. And that play has beneficial consequences.
“Crucially, Eko agents learn through this experience,” the researchers note. “The play they engage in is not an epiphenomenon unrelated to their intelligence but in fact acts to increase their competences.”
“After their 30 hours on the island, we evaluate them on four measurable goals, such as building a tower as tall as possible within a fixed amount of time, and compare them against inexperienced agents,” the authors say. “Agents that have played generally outperform the others despite having received no specific task to train on.
“The play-like activity of Eko therefore produces reusable skills and knowledge,” they say. So maybe agents learn from play, as children do.
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