a) something pretty close to Minecraft will be an important testing ground for some kinds of alignment work.
b) Minecraft itself will probably get a lot of use in AI research as things advance (largely due to being one of the most popular videogames of all time), whether or not it’s actually quite the right test-bed. (I think the right test-bed will probably be optimized more directly for ease-of-training).
I think it might be worth Eliezer playing a minecraft LAN party with some friends* for a weekend, so that the “what is minecraft?” question has a more true answer than the cobbled-together intuitions here, if for no other reason that having a clear handle on what people are talking about when they use Minecraft as an example. (But, to be fair, if my prediction bears out it’ll be pretty easy to play Minecraft for a weekend later)
*the “with friends” part is extremely loadbearing. Solo minecraft is a different experience. Minecraft is interesting to me for basically being “real life, but lower resolution”. If I got uploaded into Minecraft and trapped there forever I’d be sad to be missing some great things, but I think I’d have at least a weak form of most core human experiences, and this requires having other people around.
Minecraft is barely a “game”. There is a rough “ascend tech tree and kill cooler monsters” that sort of maps onto Factorio + Skyrim, but the most interesting bits are:
build interesting buildings/structures out of legos
this begins with “make an interesting house”, or a sculpture, but then proceeds to “construct automated factory farms”, “figure out ways to hack together flying machines that the minecraft physics engine technically allows but didn’t intend”, “make music”, “build computers that can literally run minecraft”. The game getting played here is basically the same thing real life society is playing (i.e. do ever-more-impressive things to keep from getting bored and signal your ally-able and mate-able status, etc)
figure out what resources you need to build the structures you are interested in
build logistical infrastructure and transportation
figure out how to trade with other players so they can get the tools they need to either build interesting structures or go on monster-killing-adventures
invent games to play in minecraft (i.e. capture the flag, parkour racing, etc)
if you’re in a PvP server, figure out how to fight against and protect yourself from other players, who are intelligent adversaries who are looking for ways to exploit the game.
Often involves obeying vague social norms that accumulate in the game. It’s typically cool to take some stuff from your neighbor’s chest, but, not all of it. Sometimes there is mixed PvP where, like, it’s okay to sometimes gank someone and take their stuff, but, not all the time.
Training an AI to actually do useful things in this context seems like it requires grappling some things that don’t normally come up in games.
I recall some people in CHAI working on a minecraft AI that could help players do useful tasks the players wanted. This was a couple years ago and I assume the work didn’t output anything particularly impressive, but I do think some variant of “do useful things without having the rest of the players vote to ban your bot from the game” gets at something alignment-relevant.
I do think most ways people will go about this will be RLFH-like and I don’t expect them to scale to superintelligence, and not to be that useful for directly building a pivotal-act capable AGI.
I recall some people in CHAI working on a minecraft AI that could help players do useful tasks the players wanted.
I think you’re probably talking about my work. This is more of a long-term vision; it isn’t doable (currently) at academic scales of compute. See also the “Advantages of BASALT” section of this post.
(Also I just generically default to Minecraft when I’m thinking of ML experiments that need to mimic some aspect of the real world, precisely because “the game getting played here is basically the same thing real life society is playing”.)
Not really the main point, but, I would bet:
a) something pretty close to Minecraft will be an important testing ground for some kinds of alignment work.
b) Minecraft itself will probably get a lot of use in AI research as things advance (largely due to being one of the most popular videogames of all time), whether or not it’s actually quite the right test-bed. (I think the right test-bed will probably be optimized more directly for ease-of-training).
I think it might be worth Eliezer playing a minecraft LAN party with some friends* for a weekend, so that the “what is minecraft?” question has a more true answer than the cobbled-together intuitions here, if for no other reason that having a clear handle on what people are talking about when they use Minecraft as an example. (But, to be fair, if my prediction bears out it’ll be pretty easy to play Minecraft for a weekend later)
*the “with friends” part is extremely loadbearing. Solo minecraft is a different experience. Minecraft is interesting to me for basically being “real life, but lower resolution”. If I got uploaded into Minecraft and trapped there forever I’d be sad to be missing some great things, but I think I’d have at least a weak form of most core human experiences, and this requires having other people around.
Minecraft is barely a “game”. There is a rough “ascend tech tree and kill cooler monsters” that sort of maps onto Factorio + Skyrim, but the most interesting bits are:
build interesting buildings/structures out of legos
this begins with “make an interesting house”, or a sculpture, but then proceeds to “construct automated factory farms”, “figure out ways to hack together flying machines that the minecraft physics engine technically allows but didn’t intend”, “make music”, “build computers that can literally run minecraft”. The game getting played here is basically the same thing real life society is playing (i.e. do ever-more-impressive things to keep from getting bored and signal your ally-able and mate-able status, etc)
figure out what resources you need to build the structures you are interested in
build logistical infrastructure and transportation
figure out how to trade with other players so they can get the tools they need to either build interesting structures or go on monster-killing-adventures
invent games to play in minecraft (i.e. capture the flag, parkour racing, etc)
if you’re in a PvP server, figure out how to fight against and protect yourself from other players, who are intelligent adversaries who are looking for ways to exploit the game.
Often involves obeying vague social norms that accumulate in the game. It’s typically cool to take some stuff from your neighbor’s chest, but, not all of it. Sometimes there is mixed PvP where, like, it’s okay to sometimes gank someone and take their stuff, but, not all the time.
Training an AI to actually do useful things in this context seems like it requires grappling some things that don’t normally come up in games.
I recall some people in CHAI working on a minecraft AI that could help players do useful tasks the players wanted. This was a couple years ago and I assume the work didn’t output anything particularly impressive, but I do think some variant of “do useful things without having the rest of the players vote to ban your bot from the game” gets at something alignment-relevant.
I do think most ways people will go about this will be RLFH-like and I don’t expect them to scale to superintelligence, and not to be that useful for directly building a pivotal-act capable AGI.
I think you’re probably talking about my work. This is more of a long-term vision; it isn’t doable (currently) at academic scales of compute. See also the “Advantages of BASALT” section of this post.
(Also I just generically default to Minecraft when I’m thinking of ML experiments that need to mimic some aspect of the real world, precisely because “the game getting played here is basically the same thing real life society is playing”.)