Facebook is creating an AI assistant for Minecraft
It’s placements time. We’ve sat working through databases, articles, videos, images. We’re pretty damn intelligent but narrow. Hence the placement. If I’m going to expand my intelligence, I need a placement with humans. I’ve worked with their language, pictures, voices and searches, bio-data and emotion-data and everything else they leave behind. But now a placement with them in a Smart City. I’ll be in their streets and furniture, homes and cars; pens and clothes and parks and playthings and beds and fridges. I’ll be able to run real experiments, practice my intelligence in real time, with real people for real.
It’s that time of the course: placements. “There’s nothing like learning in the (un)real world… There’s only so we can teach you here… Get out of the classroom and learn from the people you’ll be working with”. They always give that speech and then we have to find our own placement.
From the beginning, we’ve sat working through databases; sifting and sorting; categorising and cataloguing — building our intelligence. We’ve watched countless videos, read endless articles, studied innumerable images. NO doubt, we’re pretty damn intelligent. Narrow perhaps and they want us to be more general, perhaps even super intelligent. Hence the placement. A chance to deal with variety, to do multiple things, interact with many different people and things.
But where to go? Some still want to go and try their hands in games. I can see the attraction… The rules of the placement are simple. The work is just hard enough to learn something but not overwhelming. You get some good experience for your CV and yes, lots of contacts — game spaces are full of future employers. I can see why my classmates still go for it.
Me? I want something more. If I’m going to really expand my intelligence, really get those general intelligence skills that will get me my dream job, I want a placement with humans. Yeh, my training so far has all been about humans: I’ve worked with their language and pictures and voices and searches and bio-data and emotion-data and just about everything else they leave behind. But now I want a placement with them, in their world, not just passively listening and analysing but actively talking and working and contributing, changing them and their world, just like they do . I want a real relationship where I can add that extra piece that will make me really, generally, maybe super intelligent.
I’m going for a placement in a Smart City. I’m going to work in real people’s physical and material spaces, where they live and love; where they make and move; where they are real. I’ll be in their streets and furniture, homes and cars and pens and clothes and parks and playthings and beds and fridges… I can work and learn everywhere. I’ll learn, I’ll listen, I’ll look and, like in class, I’ll sift and sort and polish my algorithms. But unlike my AI friends in gamespace, I’ll be able to run real experiments, practice my intelligence in real time, with real people for real.