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This is a video demonstration of a synthetic character in a virtual world being controlled by an autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) program, which will be released to inhabitants of virtual worlds like Second Life later this year.
Novamente, a company in Washington DC which built the AI program that controls the dog, says that the demonstration is a foretaste not just of future virtual pets but of computer games to come. Their work, along with similar programs from other researchers, was presented at the First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence at the University of Memphis in Tennessee earlier this month.
If first impressions are anything to go by, synthetic pets like Novamente's dog will be a far cry from today's virtual pets, such as Neopets and Nintendogs, which can only perform pre-programmed moves, such as catching a disc. "The problem with current virtual pets is they are rigidly programmed and lack emotions, responsiveness, individual personality or the ability to learn," says Ben Goertzel of Novamente. "They are pretty much all morons."
In contrast, Goertzel claims that synthetic characters like his dog can be taught almost anything, even things that their programmers never imagined.
For instance, owners could train their pets to help win battles in adventure games such as World of Warcraft, says Sibley Verbek of the Electric Sheep Company in New York City, which helped Novamente create the virtual pets. "It is a system that allows the user to teach the virtual character anything they want to," he says.
"Pets can be trained to help win battles in adventure games such as World of Warcraft"
So how do these autonomous programs work? Take Novamente's virtual pet, which is expected to be the first to hit the market. One way that the pets learn is by being taught specific tasks by human-controlled avatars, similar to the way babies are taught by their parents.
To do this, the humans must directly tell the pet - via Second Life's instant messaging typing interface - that they are about to teach it a task. When the pet receives a specific command, such as "I am going to teach you to sit", it works out that it is about to learn something new called "sit". It then watches the human avatar and starts to copy some of the things the teacher does.
(Source Newscientist.com: http://technology.newscientist.com/article/mg19726495.700-virtual-pets-can-learn-just-like-babies.html)
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