AI Allowed to Create Their Own Culture

nomoreself writes "New Scientist reports that five European research institutes are building a virtual world with about 1000 virtual (AI) citizens, in order to observe the society these artificial agents create for themselves over the course of three years. From the article: "Each agent will be capable of various simple tasks, like moving around and building simple structures, but will also have the ability to communicate and cooperate with its cohabitants. Through simple interaction, the researchers hope to watch these characters create their very own society from scratch... [further], by pointing to objects and using randomly generated "words", characters should be able to conjure up their very own language and communicate with others inside their world." One of the researchers involved thinks the dwellers of this artificial world may even develop ritualistic practices."

Comments

incentives

[sfcat]

These types of independent agents can create interesting interactions. I assume that each agent has either common or individual goals/incentives. But the choice of these incentives is what determines what happens (at least it is a major determing factor), though it is unlikely that a person could predict the outcomes (if the system is complex enough). So how did they choose these goals/incentives? And are there penalities for over indulging (like eating too much to reproduce successfully, etc)? And what non-agent objects are in the system. People wouldn't do what they do unless they needed to manipulate their environment and compete for resources. Do these agents do the same?

Also, why have the agents develop a new language? Its just interesting to see what they do without having to guess what they are talking about. But it sounds like they are only mutating the nouns. But languages develop in different ways including different preposition structures (for instance old english had different forms of nouns instead of prepositions) different noun/verb/object orders, etc? Is this just being ignored?

And finally, human society is very complex. It is almost certainly a chaotic system meaning that any change in the initial variables makes predictions meaningless for the real world (the system to be predicted). So if they want to simulate human socities, shouldn't they make the agents mimic real people and their environment as closely has possible. It doesn't seem that this is what they are doing. If they are trying to predicte real societies, I think they are not close to this almost impossible goal.

Re:Culture is for Bacteria.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Bad at introspection means "cannot determine valid input" for a system.

That's if the fundamentalist materialists are even correct.

Lem-ing

[jefu]

Stanislaw Lem wrote a great story (actually a fictional book review) called "Non Serviam" (found in his collection of fictional reviews : "A Perfect Vacuum") in which precisely this is done and the scientist running the experiment eavesdrops on his artificial creations discussing the nature of God.

An excellent read (as are all the pieces in "A Perfect Vacuum").

Re:Culture is for Bacteria.

[locoluis]

Our Brains Don't Work Like Computers

It's like the difference between "Discrete" and "Continuous", or between "Digital" and "Analog".

And that's only one aspect of the difference. Besides, neurons are _alive_.

Re:Culture is for Bacteria.

[el_jake]

Neurons do not act like transistor gates. (AND/OR/NAND etc.)
Neurons has multiple states. Active / Semi active / Sleep. Operating many connection lines in between other neurons.

The task whould be to simulate single neurons (with code) and make theese simulated neurons interact on a weighted level. You whould need at least a billion of those sim-neurons just to be equal to a insects brain. Every sim neuron should be pre-coded with a specialized task, but allso be able to take another sim-neurons task is it should be necesary.

Makes me think of john Conway and his life algo's http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/