Researchers Create Avatar That Can Think
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created an avatar for the popular virtual world “Second Life” with the limited ability to converse and reason. The interesting part is that Edd is completely controlled by a computer.
Edd Hifeng is the avatars name and he looks like any other avatar roaming around Second Life, a place where pixilated avatars chat, interact and fly around. Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers are using Second Life as a controllable environment to test out intelligent creations.
"It’s a very inexpensive way to test out our technologies right now," said Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory.
Bringsjord believes Edd could lead to more sophisticated creations that could interact with people inside three-dimensional projections of settings like subway stops or city streets. He said the holographic illusions could be used to train emergency workers or solve mysteries.
Edd is controlled by Bringsjord and his graduate students as he roams the cyber streets of Second Life, where he can answer simple questions like “where are you from?” but only understands English that has been previously translated into mathematical logic.
Researchers benefit from the virtual reality world because they don’t have to deal with real world complications like bad weather and accidents.
“Virtual worlds can push along AI research without forcing scientists to solve the most difficult problems – like, say, creating a virtual human – right away,” said Michael Mateas, a computer science professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Mateas is the leader of the school’s Expressive Intelligence Studio for AI and gaming. He said researching in virtual realities has become increasingly popular the past couple years.
“It’s a fantastic sweet spot – not too simple, not too complicated, high cultural value,” he said.
Edd’s mental feats are done on workstations and are not sapping "Second Life" servers. According to Bringsjord, the calculations will soon be performed on a supercomputer at Rensselaer with support from research co-sponsor IBM Corp.
"I think the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled avatars and let them free in ‘Second Life,’" Lester said.
Most experts believe such advancements are years away, yet Edd has already demonstrated some sophisticated cognitive feats. Posted on the web is a situation, played out in Second Life, where Edd witnessed a gun being switched from one briefcase to another. Edd was able to infer that another "Second Life" character who left the room during the switch would incorrectly think the gun was still in the first suitcase.
For an AI agent, the ability to make inferences about the thoughts of others is significant. Still, Edd only has the mental capacity of a 4-year old and the calculus required to achieve such a feat is enormously complex.
“A computer program smart enough to fool someone into thinking they’re interacting with another person – the traditional Holy Grail for AI researchers – has been elusive. One huge problem is getting computers to understand concepts imparted in language,” said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.
Bringsjord sees "Second Life" as a way station. He eventually wants to create other environments where more sophisticated creations could display courage or deceive people, which would be the first step in developing technology to detect deception.
In October, RPI is opening a $145 million Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center where the avatars could be shown on holographic projections called “holodecks” in homage to the virtual reality room on the “Star Trek” television series.
John Kolb, RPI’s chief information officer, said the best three-dimensional effects still require viewers to wear special light-polarizing glasses.
"If you want to do texture mapping on a wall for instance, that’s easy. We can do that today," Kolb said. "If you want to start to build cognitive abilities into avatars, well, that’s going to take a bit more work."
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On the Net:
Video of gun-switch experiment