MIT Lets 13 AI Agents Play Freely on Virtual Island, Boosting Later Task Performance

MIT researchers left 13 Eko agents, each running on Claude Opus 4.7, alone on a simulated desert island for 30 hours, where they invented their own games and goals. In later specific tasks such as stacking objects, these agents generally outperformed identical agents that never visited the island. The researchers see goal-free exploration as a new way for agents to learn skills.

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