Is this machine playing?

Title:Is this machine playing?

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.

Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2610.07130 [cs.AI]

(or arXiv:2610.07130v1 [cs.AI] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.07130 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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