1. Lifestyle
  2. Tech
  3. News

Elon Musk’s research group opens ‘AI gym’ to train robots not to destroy the human race

OpenAI, which will run the gym, was established in December to make sure that artificial intelligence is used to ‘advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return’
web-spacex-musk.jpg
CEO and founder Elon Musk speaks at a SpaceX press conference (Getty) Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Elon Musk’s AI research group has opened a “gym” for robots, to ensure that they can be properly tested.

The new project is an attempt to bring together training for artificially intelligent machines, allowing them to be fairly compared with each other – and avoid any problem results.

The gym has been launched as the first project from OpenAI, a research group that is funded by backers including Mr Musk as well as a range of other tech leaders. The project launched in December and aims to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return”.

In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history

In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history

  • 1/7 Boston Dynamics

    Boston Dynamics describes itself as 'building dynamic robots and software for human simulation'. It has created robots for DARPA, the US' military research company

  • 2/7 Google's self-driving cars

    Google has been using similar technology to build self-driving cars, and has been pushing for legislation to allow them on the roads

  • 3/7 DARPA Urban Challenge

    The DARPA Urban Challenge, set up by the US Department of Defense, challenges driverless cars to navigate a 60 mile course in an urban environment that simulates guerilla warfare

  • 4/7 Deep Blue beats Kasparov

    Deep Blue, a computer created by IBM, won a match against world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. The computer could evaluate 200 million positions per second, and Kasparov accused it of cheating after the match was finished

  • 5/7 Watson wins Jeopardy

    Another computer created by IBM, Watson, beat two champions of US TV series Jeopardy at their own game in 2011

  • 6/7 Apple's Siri

    Apple's virtual assistant for iPhone, Siri, uses artificial intelligence technology to anticipate users' needs and give cheeky reactions

  • 7/7 Kinect

    Xbox's Kinect uses artificial intelligence to predict where players are likely to go, an track their movement more accurately

The gym’s primary function is establishing benchmarks for artificially intelligent systems, so that they can be compared against one another. That is intended as a way of monitoring the progress of such systems – and hopefully ensuring that they don’t go wrong, or have the kinds of effects that Mr Musk and others have repeatedly warned about.

Programmers will be able to submit their AIs to the gym, which will run them through a range of tests and see how they get on. It is not simply one test – like the game Go, which has been used before – but is instead a range of different trials that look to test the artificial intelligence in full.

Read more

AlphaGo beat Lee Se-dol - but it's a long way from being human

The problem with specific trials, like DeepMind’s success in Go, is that systems can be created specifically for any given test. They might then be good at only that challenge – making it difficult to compare the powers of systems against one another.

But in the OpenAI Gym, researchers will theoretically be able to share their scores and compare it with others.That will allow the research to be conducted in public and in comparable ways, hopefully avoiding the potential for AI to go wrong.

Comments