Gaming the System in the Search for AI Data

We all know that a lot in this world is done by gaming the system. Web scrapping might be a way of doing things in a world where a lot about the world is there. Although many of us bright entrepreneurs know that gaming is wrong, some of our instincts keep giving us reasons to think of new ways to do it.

In terms of our legitimate reasons to look to the online world, when I vouch for us to accept the reality as usable and modifiable, my reasons seem to gravitate towards the original idea of the Web - that ideal read/write place for everyone - and also perhaps around the fact that all the words online aren’t really words, are just building blocks of a world, like a city, bricks and places, and art that is there like statues and paintings that we can observe and take pictures.

But then, on the other hand, I also see the other world which confuses me - when that art is not given like the Colosseum, and it is given within a frame, like some of the frames inside the Louvre. Then I can’t exactly touch it anymore; I can’t exactly take or be in it. So, between these two worlds, I get confused. I love both of them, somehow.

I love the art in the streets and the bricks and places which are for all of us; but I also respect the value of these other things that people create and where they create because they know that there is some value for them too. That seems to be a way that sets them to move forward. So it’s a puzzle, for me, but also a puzzle for these AI systems that are so interested in learning from the world, and especially interested in learning faster.

What to do? When naively thinking about a solution, in a hurry, I thought about using AI to come up with the whole world. As in, “My dear ChatGPT, please write the world for me but write the world’s creations in ways that data can be used by some other system that will come upon you, to reinvent you. So, don’t be afraid, fear not, and give me one so that another world becomes possible.”

Under my naive influence, I usually add things like “Thank you,” and “Please give me this world written in English, Japanese, Esperanto, and Klingon.” So anyway, that is naive or limited, I know.

But then I was thinking from that perspective, of a world, and that took me to think about games, and specially about the sort of games where a whole world happens there. So I thought, what if another world exists? Or what if the whole universe could be created like a game?

And what if that infrastructure had in it some mechanism for us, the beings from outside so that we could see everything, and use everything to learn? Could that be done? Perhaps we can’t yet fully get the data from our own world’s data, for us to reinvent ourselves, granted. But perhaps, too we could start prototyping a world, like a world within a universe.

What if something could start from almost nothing - something that grows, like from an initial tiny spark? And from that spark, what if some of the interactions could unfold elementary building blocks? And that through these interactions - and frictions - things could go on and on and on. And, perhaps, if we could find some basic mechanism where beings could exist in there. And where they could eventually become smarter, collectively speaking, so that they could make too their own worlds.

All of that for us to be able to simply watch and smile, and get the data. I don’t mean for us to play gods for them, although I would have hopes about the odds of them thinking of Gods. But we would be able to watch, to see everything, to see them making love or even fighting each other, to see them learning from their bad collaborative interactions, to see them evolving, eventually.

And if somehow they stumble in creating their own technologies for reinventing their world, that is fine too. Then our highest possible lesson - to be taken from them - would be about watching them solve their own problems first-hand.