Free play · 8 games

Xiaoyu Li

What does it mean for AI to help a person?

I’m trying to understand myself and the world I find myself in. Mathematics, art, and philosophy are ways I explore it.

PhD student in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales

Every coloured tile is a game, and most of them hide a page of this site. Pick one up and play.

Wordworm

after Snake

Eat the letters in order and the worm writes out one of my essay titles. Its world is a Möbius strip: go out on the right and you come back on the left, upside down.

Flipwell

after Tetris

Every four lines earn a flip: the whole well turns upside down, every block tumbles to the floor, the holes vanish and full rows cascade away. Each line adds a word to my question.

Hunch to Atlas

after 2048

Merge hunches into notes, lemmas, proofs and papers, all the way to an atlas. Reviewer 2 drops in now and then, and won't merge with anything.

Tiny Planet

after the dinosaur game

Run round a planet small enough to lap. Whatever you jump over comes round again, a little bigger each time, until it blossoms. Catch the paper planes.

Catnap

after Minesweeper

Minesweeper with ten sleeping cats for mines. Lift a cushion with a cat under it and it wakes up; leave a fish to keep one napping. Some cushions hide letters. Wake three and nap time is over.

Lantern

after Breakout

Breakout in the dark: the ball is the only light, and every row is one of my titles. Break a whole title to free a firefly; catch it, and the lantern shines further.

Research

PurposeWhat should AI help people pursue?How can people express, revise, and refuse goals? Learning a preference is not permission to act.
AgencyWhen does help empower rather than replace?Does assistance increase a person’s ability to understand and act? People should be able to choose how much to delegate and take back control.
EvidenceHow do we know the help was real?What observations justify a claim of benefit? When do guarantees survive connections between models, tools, and people?

The research statement

Desk Hop

after Jump Jump

Hop across a mathematician's desk. A run of dead-centre landings plays the folk song Mo Li Hua, beat by beat; land on a book or a curio to pick up one of my pages.

Ink Crane

after Flappy Bird

Fly a crane through bamboo in an ink painting. Your path dries into calligraphy, your best flight flies beside you as a ghost, and lanterns carry my essays.