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US Army To Use MMOs For Turing Tests
Massively points out an article about new research projects for the US Army. One of the projects will evidently involve testing their AI capabilities in popular MMOs, including World of Warcraft and EVE Online.
"They're working on creating 'photorealistic looking and acting human beings' that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang. 'I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they're responding,' Parmentola said. To test out the computer generated humans' 'humanity,' Parmentola and his researchers want to unleash some of their cyber Soldiers into so-called 'massively multi-player online games' such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online — games frequented by thousands of super-competitive human players in teams of virtual characters fighting battles that can last for days. 'We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they're good enough to convince humans that they're actually human,' he said."
So they'll act like retarded 12-year olds?
if you want to test AI's I suggest you use adventure and puzzle games (for mature audiences, not for youth).
MMO's are the most automated of games. They don't involve thought, they involve grinding, grinding, and more grinding.
If they're going to use this as a metric for AI's, I think they should just buy up glider and connect its attacks to real weapons.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
US ARMY - "VIRTUAL ONLINE INTERNET GAME USING ETHERNET CONNECTIONS AND PROGRAMMING" - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LOG
PARMENTOLA0WNZ: heh. are u a robot?
SEPHIROTH112: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS TP ME BACK TO BARRENS YOUR NOT A GM
PARMENTOLA0WNZ: my god, men. weve done it.
LOG ENDS
Somedays I wonder if humans playing WoW could pass the Turing Test let alone bots ...
"HEAL PLX!" "LF3M GOT TANK BRD!" etc etc...
Blizzard won't ban a US army research project because I imagine it would be rather difficult to develop WoW2 from Gitmo..
In other news, Blizzard is looking forward to record profits in the coming quarters from windfall lawsuits against the government willfully violating their terms of service.
In other other news, after reaching an agreement with the US government, the Chinese government seeks to reach similar terms to investigate Turing-complete gold farmers pointing out that gold farming is an intrinsically human activity and that a bot that could accomplish the same ends would be a great boon to society.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
Tester: sup bot?
Bot: Are you very interested in sup bot?
Tester: what?
Bot: I see. And how does that make you feel?
I do not think the goal is artificial intelligence, i think, from the description of the research, its artificial stupidity. First it will fool WoW players, then it will move on up the ladder to tests subjects like mice with cancerous brain tumors, piles of cardboard, and eventually, cocker spaniels.
...just like civilians (only with markedly fewer pacifists) who would rather play MMOs all day than be in warzones.
I've come up with silly excuses in work before involving needing to test my product's behaviour undewr server load by running alongside an FPS etc and this is just the natural extension when the alternative is far more dire and the budget orders of magnitude greater. To the guy who wrote the convincing research proposal, bravo! The only safe government is an idle government.
http://archive.gamespy.com/fargo/august03/autorpg/