If AI research is anything like research in certain other fields, there’s a significant speed benefit to be gained from being able to experiment and prototype.
Yes, you can learn much more from witnessing one failure than from dozens of thought experiments. But things change when a failure has a significant chance of exterminating the human race.
Yes, you can learn much more from witnessing one failure than from dozens of thought experiments. But things change when a failure has a significant chance of exterminating the human race.
So it depends on how good a box you can make for how little money.