News out today from various blogs and news sites that researchers have created a Second Life avatar with the “intelligence” and independent reasoning of a four year old (or, if you prefer the interpretation of online IT journal The Inquirer, “AI boffins create four year loser”).
The invention of scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY, US), “Eddie” can draw conclusions and reason to the ability of your average four year old child.
According to Selmer Bringsjord, head of Rensselaer's Cognitive Science Department:
"Current avatars in massively multiplayer online worlds - such as Second Life - are directly tethered to a user's keystrokes and only give the illusion of mentality. Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things."
'Eddie' came about as a result of Bringsjord's research into how artificial agents can understand, predict, and manipulate the behavior of other agents, such as virtual world avatars. On a virtual world level the research could soon see characters being born who have an autonomous existence not reliant on a human being sitting at the other side of a computer screen.
However, the researchers ultimate goal is much bigger.
Supported by IBM, the team hopes to engineer a version of the Star Trek holodeck - a virtual reality system used onboard the Enterprise that allowed the crew to create environments populated by holograms who appeared real.
According to the team, such a system could similarly allow artificial characters to interact directly and convincingly with 'real' human beings and just like with the Star Trek example could be used for a whole range of training simulations.
A short demo is available here.
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