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.)

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.