One step towards building safe AI systems is to remove the need for humans to write goal functions, since using a simple proxy for a complex goal, or getting the complex goal a bit wrong, can lead to undesirable and even dangerous behavior. In collaboration with DeepMind’s safety team, we’ve developed an algorithm which can infer what humans want by being told which of two proposed behaviors is better.
Multiagent environments where agents compete for resources are stepping stones on the path to AGI. Multiagent environments have two useful properties: first, there is a natural curriculum—the difficulty of the environment is determined by the skill of your competitors (and if you’re competing against clones of yourself, the environment exactly matches your skill level). Second, a multiagent environment has no stable equilibrium: no matter how smart an agent is, there’s always pressure to get smarter. These environments have a very different feel from traditional environments, and it’ll take a lot more research before we become good at them.