Worlds in Motion strikes again, this time with a very interesting article on virtual world characters that can think for themselves, a concept being developed by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with support from IBM and other sponsors.

They say these characters will be able to predict and manipulate the behavior of real-world people, and unveiled a 4-year old Second Life child named Eddie as an example.

Apparently “Eddie” (Horrible nick…ltp, AI n00b. Sorry…couldn’t resist) can tell that someone won’t look for a teddy bear in the fridge. No, really.

The researchers say that Eddie’s already been subjected to a “false belief” test, which they explain:

“In a typical real-life version of this test, a child witnesses a series of events in which Person A places an object (such as a teddy bear) in a certain location (such as a cabinet). Person A then leaves the room, and during his absence Person B moves the object to a new location (such as the refrigerator). The child is then asked to predict where Person A will look for the object when he gets back. The right answer, of course, is the cabinet, but children age 4 and under will generally say the refrigerator because they haven’t yet formed a theory of the mind of others.”

Eddie gave the “correct” answer, but that’s not what bothers me. If we turn a four year old intelligence loose in Second Life to learn…well, Eddie will start out like this:

And in two weeks’ time will end up like this:

But what would be the ultimate goal of this project, other than giving us the opportunity for NPC’s to start making fun of our playstyle and telling “Yo’ Mama” jokes during raids?

The research group says it wants to develop a real-world version of Star Trek’s holodeck, where users can interact with projected holograms of other individuals.

Which, of course, leads us to the possibility of a new form of “grinding” in MMOs involving Jessica Alba.

“I’m not even real, and I’m still too good for you.” Yes, that holodeck thingy will work out just fine.

In all seriousness, this could be a fairly major breakthrough in artificial intelligence, and worth keeping an eye on.

For movies of the various tests conducted inside Second Life, tests which were obviously not true tests in the actual virtual world (as evidenced by the extreme lack of flying penises during the testing) go here.

Tags: artificial intelligence, games, gaming, mmo, mmorpg, Second Life