Artificial intelligence heading for Second Life
Gibson’s ‘Wintermute’ may be coming to Second life, according to an article on the BBC news website it appears researchers are preparing to develop smart bots that can respond to stimuli and learn – great for SL pets. The downside is that I can see this becoming the new ‘tamagochi’ in which pets will become so demanding of their owners to seek rewards and virtual food that people will literally become addicted to these creatures 🙂
It might also develop into a turing machine so ultimately – to paraphrase that famous quote – in Second Life no one knows you’re a bot! But I think such days are quite a way off. I can certainly envisage smart dog-like pets.
Of course there could also be a darker side to such technologies – smart ID sniffers that masquerade as pets giving you virtual gifts that find ways to entice you out of your password or credit card details – but then such bots are already around according to this report.
More likely will be the commercial applications that respond to the profile information in the avatar to target advertising – I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before a context sensitive ‘Google Adsense’-type system comes to Second Life so that as you approach a vendor it responds, not just with freebies, but ones that offer items geared towards the individual interests of the user.
Another element to this might well be tailored rides – hop onto your personal dragonfly and it will take you to various locations in SL that match your profile settings or your taste in art, music, clothes, shoes or hair – responding differently for each rider 🙂
It could be the start of a whole new shopping experience!
Comment by Nobody Fugazi
Turing machines are really a waste of money. We already have a process of producing artificial intelligence; we’ve had it for years. Is this a push to replace sex? 😉
Posted on September 20, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Comment by jerry
Heheh Okay, so that was a throwaway line – however, given Linen Lab’s adoption of Google search it’s more likely to be a push to target advertising more precisely.
Posted on September 20, 2007 at 9:40 pm