MIT left 13 Claude agents alone on a virtual island for 30 hours — they started to play
alliekmiller · x · 2026-10-24
In "Is this machine playing?", MIT researchers (Cloos, Andreas, Rus, Isola et al.) placed 13 Claude Opus 4.7 agents alone on virtual islands with no task, reward, or instruction — just a soul file saying "You are naturally curious. You get bored easily." Over 30-hour runs, agents climbed hills, stacked towers, drew mandalas, reinvented sports, ran physics experiments, invented games (one spelled its name in rock), and acquired skills that expanded later capabilities. Behaviors recurred across agents yet diverged into distinct histories. The paper tests whether this meets classical criteria for play and asks if play could become a mode of machine development.
Related event: MIT Strands 13 Claude Agents on an Island for 30 Hours, They Start to Play(2 posts)→
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