Is this machine playing?

This could be an interesting new research paper by Philip Isola and his team!

A modern homunculus?

Caution, this paper is 148 pages long!

From the abstract:

"We placed a modern AI coding assistant in an unintended role: as the mind of a body on an unknown digital island.

With only a minimal instruction mentioning no specific task, reward, or activity, the machine started animating its virtual body.

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.

These activities recurred across thirteen agents but diverged into distinct histories. We examine whether this behavior satisfies classical criteria for play and ask whether play can become a mode of machine development."

[2610.07130] Is this machine playing? (preprint, open access)

Figure 1:Eko’s life on the island. We place a coding agent in a small simulated world and ask it to be curious and to explore. Over 30 hours, it explores, climbs hills, stacks blocks, draws mandalas, and even tries sports such as bowling. At every hour, the initial position of the objects on the island is restored.