It’s Time to Study AI on Its Own Terms

This new discipline is concerned with the scientific study of machines, not as engineering artifacts, but as a new class of actors with their unique behavioral patterns and ecology. Crucially, this field overlaps with, but is distinct from computer science and robotics, as it treats machine behavior observationally and experimentally, without necessarily appealing to the machine’s internal mechanisms. Machine Behavior is akin to how the fields of animal behavior—also known as ethology—and behavioral ecology study the behavior of animals without necessarily focusing on physiology or biochemistry.