I love how this beautifully describes the spirit of play and challenge, as well as the phases of growing up and “not being able to play” anymore.
But I feel let down by the turn towards this being a metaphor for AI:
As a reader, I was drawn in by the ideas, imagery and writing, only to be led into what the author wants the metaphor to be about. The writing is excellent in itself before the switch, and the switch made that part merely instrumental for the twist. And while I don’t know whether it was the case here, the idea that some authors at LW might feel that their beautiful ideas and writing need to be relevant to AI here makes me a bit sad.
I also think the metaphor is fundamentally wrong to the extent it indicates play and challenge as the main forces behind companies racing for A(G)I, whether you treat them as collectives of individuals or superagent entities. Similarly to any developed industry, I’m afraid the main forces behind the AI race are not the playful “we do it because we can” motivation or individuals rising to a challenge—this hasn’t been true for a while now. By no means I mean to lessen the importance of personal responsibility or deny that excellent AI researchers work more efficiently with a good challenge, but think it is not a very good model for causality and overall dynamics here—for example I believe that if you removed the individual challenge and playfulness from the engineers and researchers (but keeping the prestige, career prospects, and other incentives), the industry would probably merely slow down a bit.
By the way, I was really intrigued by the parenting angle here—the idea of guiding my kids through how the game itself changes for them once they master it, and helping them mark their victories and achievements as a growing up ritual.
I love how this beautifully describes the spirit of play and challenge, as well as the phases of growing up and “not being able to play” anymore.
But I feel let down by the turn towards this being a metaphor for AI:
As a reader, I was drawn in by the ideas, imagery and writing, only to be led into what the author wants the metaphor to be about. The writing is excellent in itself before the switch, and the switch made that part merely instrumental for the twist. And while I don’t know whether it was the case here, the idea that some authors at LW might feel that their beautiful ideas and writing need to be relevant to AI here makes me a bit sad.
I also think the metaphor is fundamentally wrong to the extent it indicates play and challenge as the main forces behind companies racing for A(G)I, whether you treat them as collectives of individuals or superagent entities. Similarly to any developed industry, I’m afraid the main forces behind the AI race are not the playful “we do it because we can” motivation or individuals rising to a challenge—this hasn’t been true for a while now. By no means I mean to lessen the importance of personal responsibility or deny that excellent AI researchers work more efficiently with a good challenge, but think it is not a very good model for causality and overall dynamics here—for example I believe that if you removed the individual challenge and playfulness from the engineers and researchers (but keeping the prestige, career prospects, and other incentives), the industry would probably merely slow down a bit.
By the way, I was really intrigued by the parenting angle here—the idea of guiding my kids through how the game itself changes for them once they master it, and helping them mark their victories and achievements as a growing up ritual.