I'm concerned that none of these goals involve AI safety. Instead all of their goals are nearly the exact opposite, of accelerating AI technology as much as possible.
Safety was one of the main goals they promoted when it was founded. 2 of the 4 authors listed have publicly spoken about their belief of AI as an existential risk.
I'm not saying that a game playing AI is going to take over the world. But it does demonstrate the risk - we still have no idea how to control such an AI. We can train it to get high scores. But it won't want to do anything other than get high scores. And it will do whatever it takes to get the highest score possible, even if it means exploiting the game or hurting other players, or disobeying it's masters.
Now imagine they succeed in making smarter AIs. And their research spawns new research, which inspires new research, etc. Perhaps over several decades we could have AIs that are a lot more formidable than being able to play Pac Man. But we may still not have made any progress on the ability to control them.
Safety was one of the main goals they promoted when it was founded. 2 of the 4 authors listed have publicly spoken about their belief of AI as an existential risk.
I'm not saying that a game playing AI is going to take over the world. But it does demonstrate the risk - we still have no idea how to control such an AI. We can train it to get high scores. But it won't want to do anything other than get high scores. And it will do whatever it takes to get the highest score possible, even if it means exploiting the game or hurting other players, or disobeying it's masters.
Now imagine they succeed in making smarter AIs. And their research spawns new research, which inspires new research, etc. Perhaps over several decades we could have AIs that are a lot more formidable than being able to play Pac Man. But we may still not have made any progress on the ability to control them.