Perhaps, but those surroundings would inevitably have human influence. I suppose you could make a simulated world and put simulated AI in it, you would need many entities so they could learn empathy and interaction with other beings. It would work similarly to a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network). Where the AI entities compete and that is what drives the learning. Then you just don't allow any human interference at all, just AI vs AI interactions. That could work.

That being said though, that could be what we are experiencing right now. We may be those entities being simulated to create a pure AI in a simulated environment. It would be identical to what we are experiencing, and we ended up being manipulative and destructive on our own.