Elon Musk Open Sources New 'AI Gym' (csmonitor.com) 44
An anonymous reader writes: OpenAI, a billion-dollar research non-profit backed by Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley executives, just released a public beta of a new Open Source gym for computer programmers working on artificial intelligence. "Nothing beats a competitive environment to motivate developers," says Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "It's like a monster truck rally for AI programmers."
The gym lets developers run tests in a standardized environment and share their results, and was built by OpenAI to develop algorithms for the non-profit's own research, according to the Christian Science Monitor. "The gym's exercises range from robot simulations to Atari games and are designed to develop reinforcement learning, the type of computer skills needed for motor control, and decision-making. 'Long-term, we want this curation to be a community effort rather than something owned by us,' Greg Brockman and John Schulman wrote in an OpenAI blog post. 'We'll necessarily have to figure out the details over time, and we'd would love your help in doing so.'"
The gym lets developers run tests in a standardized environment and share their results, and was built by OpenAI to develop algorithms for the non-profit's own research, according to the Christian Science Monitor. "The gym's exercises range from robot simulations to Atari games and are designed to develop reinforcement learning, the type of computer skills needed for motor control, and decision-making. 'Long-term, we want this curation to be a community effort rather than something owned by us,' Greg Brockman and John Schulman wrote in an OpenAI blog post. 'We'll necessarily have to figure out the details over time, and we'd would love your help in doing so.'"
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Bollocks. (Score:1, Interesting)
Nothing beats a competitive environment to motivate developers.
Capitalism has become so ingrained like a religion in the psyche that we assume it reflects nature.
Humans are sophisticated social species. The norm is to get together and to cooperate - we fight as a last resort. Our current system has put us in a constant state of last-resort thinking. Sure, we're good at it, but only because that's the final option we have been evolved to deal with - everything beats a competitive environment.
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He's at one extreme, you're at the other. As with most things in life the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Competition is good in some areas - eg supermarkets bringing prices down or car performance - and co-operation is better in others such as blue sky research. Life is far more nuanced than either of you seem to appreciate.
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1) I didn't say that competition was always bad - I said it was a last resort;
2) Supermarkets tend only to bring prices down at the wholesale level, but in a mature market will match each other at retail. This couldn't be more obvious in the UK, where e.g. milk producers end up tied into contracts where they're selling milk at a loss a lot of the time;
3) I don't drive since it seems an extremely inefficient way of getting around. I know that the US is unlike Europe in that, again, people take the competitiv
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IF only my fellow Americans would learn the poor aren't that dangerous. I would describe most of my interactions with them on public transportation as pleasantly amusing. Of course most of the time I'm minding my own business while retaining my sanity and saving hoards of cash by not piloting myself to my destination.
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In the long run, businesses consolidate and stagnate, i.e. you end up with a cooperative environment anyway, except that the cooperation is for profit. The only place where competition appears effective is in an immature market, where most of the players haven't sold out yet.
You've made the same fundamental error here that Karl Marx did in his formulation of economic theory: that production systems do reach maturity, where change ceases and competition therefore no longer matters[1]. In fact, this theory of non-advancement actually does describe reality at times, but only when other forces have arranged to squash competition. As long as competition is present, markets do not stagnate because the competitors continue innovating, looking for an edge to make their products more va
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[2] I'm skeptical that government anti-trust efforts are either necessary or even useful. If you look at the history of government anti-trust efforts what you find is a repeated pattern of government stepping in with relatively ineffective measures, followed by the destruction of the monopoly by an innovation-driven market reorganization that which would have happened regardless.
Over and over this topic comes up, and over and over I wonder how in the hell people are so unaware of THE defining example of a government regulated monopoly. That being Ma Bell and Bell Labs, of course. The combo of immense corporate power, focus, and resources, combined with government scrutiny that required them to limit their profits meant that they dumped most excess cash into Bell Labs, which did the lion's share of the fundamental research work that created the information age. Seriously, it's a lon
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Bell Labs did some great work, sure. But there's no reason to expect that any other organization with tons of excess cash wouldn't do as well, or that any other monopoly-supported organization would have, or for that matter some directly government-funded research lab (because that's exactly what Bell Labs was, in effect, a research lab funded by "tax" revenues).
Bell Labs was one confluence of circumstances which happened to work out fairly well. We think. It's not evidence of anything except that sometim
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Nothing beats a competitive environment to motivate developers.
...The norm is to get together and to cooperate - we fight as a last resort. Our current system has put us in a constant state of last-resort thinking...
It's interesting that you think that competition is the same as fighting. It's not.
pick an analogy (Score:1)
is it a gym, or a monster truck rally? nevermind I don't care.
Re:Christian Science Monitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite its name, Christian Science Monitor is actually one of the best news outfits around. Its quality is astoundingly good, its bias is minimal, and it puts most other mainstream news outlets to shame.
Oh no (Score:1)
Nothing like a competitive environment to do half assed uninspired work with major corner cuts.
Got the Singularity Badge (Score:1)
Wait, what (Score:2)
Wait, really? Because I see when people try to motivate me with a "competitive environment" they're not motivating me with, say money. Which is fine for academics (the Underhanded C guy), but I wouldn't expect group with a $1 billion to do that.
Also, I don't really think I would send algorithms with high value, and low ability to detect theft (if even protectable) to an offsite location, or especially this offsite location
One More (Score:1)
Things like this already exist, but these guys are pushing the social, sharing, and gamification of this much more than the others. The existing 'gyms' are more domain specific. Many of them are started by research students or professors and then eventually left to rot right when they're getting useful. I wonder how long this one will last.
What makes the environment competitive is the ranked 'score board', nothing more. No prizes, etc... I expect people will quickly try to start gaming the system. AI
Want to fund Ai? (Score:2)
why?!! (Score:2)
arn't these the same asshats that said the Al bundy is going to destroy the world?
AI Gym Membership (Score:2)
You'll know that the AI has surpassed humanity when its able to successfully escape from its monthly gym membership fees.