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

Learning about ourselves.

[Leroy_Brown242]

This has a lot of interesting possiblities.

One being that given a blank slate, what they tend to do on multiple runs. (Do they always end up the same place, or does chaos theory win out?)

Another, is that the AI could be programmed to have a pre-disposition, and see how they progress. (Homosexuality, self destruction, etc, etc)

And yet another could change their environments and see how they react. (Plague, overcrowding, etc, etc.)

Call me skeptical, but...

[afabbro]

...wouldn't the culture they create be a reflection of the motivations they're given? 1,000 humans are so diverse that the culture could be anything. How do you get that level of diversity into AIs, using present technology?

Seriously, I imagine even describing programmatically the motivations and desires of 1,000 humans is impossible right now. You could simplify it (Sims, most CRPGs) but then you're at my question.

I have a feeling that if they are AIs who simply need to do X, Y, and Z to survive and survival is their priority, then there will be only a sterile culture of efficiency.

This isn't my area of expertise...just musing.

(Yes, I'm aware that you could therefore say that humans are result of the motivations our creators gave us...I'm not going into that.)

I hate the asymmetry in news reporting

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

When someone creates a new project it gets press releases and news coverage. But when the project fizzles out because it was completely lame and didn't go anywhere in the least bit interesting nobody bother reporting it. It's like news stories are written in a dialect of C++ with constructors but no destructors.

Well I think it's time for the garbage collector of the news world. Someone who goes through year or three old science and technology magazines looking for projects where the leaders say things like "this technique will replace everything else" or "I expect my system to develop self-awareness over the next 18 months" and brings a bit of closure to them. If the project has failed then the project leaders need to be asked "what do you have to say about your extravagant claims?", "how do you feel about the grant money you frittered away?" and "how do you respond to the poeple who claimed you were a crackpot at the beginning?".

I'll have to put this story in my queue for re-examination in 2006.

You don't need to worry

[petrus4]

Like an earlier comment said, it took millions of years for languages to appear among humans, and that doesn't even account for whether or not the process is genuinely random, or whether there was some kind of direction involved.

I personally believe that the term "artificial intelligence" (at least as it currently applies) is misleading...Outside of science fiction, there really isn't any such thing. Even in situations where somebody's been able to come up with a genetic algorithm that produced something interesting, the AI it produced was only able to operate within its' given environment; i.e., as an expert system. Take it out of the target environment however, and it would fall flat on its face just as surely as a desktop machine after coming to the end of a shell script. There's no adaptability there whatsoever.

Computers still don't have any real capacity for dealing with novelty...the best any GA I've ever heard of has been able to do is widen the category of knowledge that a given expert system can have, and make the boundaries of said category *look* more fuzzy and organic...but in reality, it's smoke and mirrors.

Occasionally I'll see applications which stimulate my interest...the creatures in Black and White were innovative, and the Sims 2 makes reasonably good use of numerical weighting, even if the pathfinding there still sucks to a degree.

Assuming it's possible for strong AI to exist at all, (and again, I have grave doubts) everything I've seen tells me it's still anywhere between 50-200 years away. Skynet or it's equivalent won't be showing up anytime soon.