[namedlambda]

What is the difference between experiencing reality and a game?

The difference I can see is that there is no one explicit objective function, but this doesn't stop generally capable agents [1], and doesn't imply that inverse RL is not possible.

> The ability to play go very well doesn't enable an AGI to better understand reality.

I disagree, model based RL constructs a model of the agent's reality and can use it to plan ahead, train the agent, or do some form of monte-carlo tree search. The latter is something very similar to how we imagine and think about the future.

[1] https://deepmind.com/blog/article/generally-capable-agents-e...

[blamestross]

I'm in total agreement about the potential of growing AGI out of these methods, but there will be bottlenecks well before the gods of the singularity come knocking.

[blamestross]

> What is the difference between experiencing reality and a game?

Finding out the consequences of an action is a lot more expensive in reality than a simulation of a game.

[namedlambda]

There is nothing fundamentally different between an infinite horizon game and reality.