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US Army To Use MMOs For Turing Tests

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-tax-dollars-at-play dept.

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."

4 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Eheh, turing test eh? by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, how long will it be before the bots develop an Elizia test? Setup, two interactions, one a WoW player, the other a .bat file. See if you can spot the difference!

    Come on, I know AI is hard, but do you really need to lower the bar that much you have to dig a hole?

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    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  2. good idea wrong game by mcfatboy93 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i think if the military is looking for a game to use it would be halo. its exachly what the military wants exept that the n00b totaly PWNing them is a in-active sloth. they also might be able to use COD4. i think these games would better suit the military than WOW.

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    Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
  3. Re:"military intelligence" oxymoron still works... by sargx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think you missed the title of this post, let me remind you: "US Army To Use MMOs For Turing Tests." It's a turing test, not a "ken we farm Illidan test." Which is why an MMO is perfect for it.

  4. EVE-Online by tibman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'll be honest, if i can get several million dollars worth of AI research as my gang mate, i don't care. I'd even let the thing join my corp if it could fit and fly a decent pvp ship. But the learning curve is hard for a person, i doubt a machine could do it without lots of specifics scripted in. But it's fun to speculate if it would be a highsec griefer, lowsec pirate, carebear, 0.0 nano-nut, or sit in an asteroid belt and mine all day?

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    http://soylentnews.org/~tibman