Microsoft: Goats in Age of Empires Critique AI

A Microsoft researcher recently drew attention by using the famous video game Age of Empires II to conduct an unconventional experiment. By leveraging the game's map editor, he built a functional neural network using elements such as goats, bridges, and ice ramps. What might seem like a simple joke is actually a serious critique of current research methods in artificial intelligence.

The goal of this approach was to highlight certain weaknesses in how AI experiments are designed. The researcher analyzed 315 scientific papers and found that more than half of them assumed that language models possessed human-like characteristics even before the experiments began. This presumption could influence the results and interpretations of the research.

By replacing the chat interface with wandering goats in the game, the researcher demonstrated that while the underlying mathematics remains unchanged, the perception of interaction is profoundly altered. This experiment underscores the importance of not anthropomorphizing AI models without empirical evidence and calls for greater rigor in the design of studies on artificial intelligence.