Avatars and AI
May 29 2008 / by randalc
Category: Culture Year: 2010 Rating: 10 Hot
Recently Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute created
an artificial intelligence program to run within the platform of
Second Life. The researchers are studying the interactions that
occur with real people 
through
their avatars. The RPI students created
the program to maneuver the avatar and understand some fairly
straight forward questions, asked in English.
Operators of Second Life don’t seem concerned about synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based company sees a fascinating opportunity for AI to evolve. “I think the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled avatars and let them free in ‘Second Life,’” Lester said, ” ... let them randomly walk the grid.”
With AI characters within a grid of tens of thousands of active users the social experimentation is nearly limitless. Social scientists can examine certain behaviors and even provoke them through the AI interface. Most interesting is if the AI can recognize and then smoothly translate languages the program could create cultural bridges and even examine cultural behavior proclivities.
Comment Thread (1 Response)
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Very interesting research. I just wonder when AI avatars will be able to do complex tasks and more importantly, what that will do to the SL job market?
Posted by: Marisa Vitols May 30, 2008
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