Do AIs Need to Have Fun?
The AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber has argued in a talk that there is a precise way to optimize a self-improving superintelligence based upon Godel’s mathematics. He further explained this in a paper audaciously named “Formal Theory of Creativity, Fun, and Intrinsic Motivation”.
He says “The simple but general formal theory of fun & intrinsic motivation & creativity (1990-) is based on the concept of maximizing intrinsic reward for the active creation or discovery of novel, surprising patterns allowing for improved prediction or data compression … it has been argued that the theory explains many essential aspects of intelligence including autonomous development, science, art, music, humor. …
He continues: “To build a creative agent that never stops generating non-trivial & novel & surprising data, we need two learning modules: (1) an adaptive predictor or compressor or model of the growing data history as the agent is interacting with its environment and (2) as a general reinforcement learner. The learning progress of (1) is the fun or intrinsic reward of (2). That is, (2) is motivated to invent things that (1) does not yet know but can easily learn. … some of the AGIs based on the creativity principle will become scientists, artists, or comedians.”
Who would ever have imagined that AI’s might need to have fun? And yet, why would self-directing intelligences of any sort otherwise bother with “thinking” beyond addressing their own survival issues?
This is an entirely different view of AIs than the Terminator-type fears which dominate popular dystopian fiction. Yes, there are serious reasons to be concerned about the motivations of AIs and the possible threat they pose to humanity. But given adequate resources of matter and energy to maintain their thinking processes, AIs may just as well find us interesting–even fun–rather than something to extinguish or rule.
In my view, humanity can assure a safe coexistence with AIs only by merging with them. While this prospect will be discomfiting to many, it need not be unpleasant. Done on an “opt in/opt out” basis, people will be able to augment our senses and intelligence as we now augment our bodies with machines such as cars.
A Celebration Society comprised of “humans” in various expressions of humanity–both ordinary and AI enhanced–could be a wonderful tapestry of possibilities, far beyond our present imaginings.