What do virtual worlds have to offer AI?
From the AI perspective, the “AI meets virtual worlds” intersection hits right at the heart of a long-time philosophical debate: the necessity or otherwise of embodiment for AI. Great AI minds have fallen on both sides of this debate: most of the so-called Good Old-Fashioned AI systems are embodied only in a very limited sense; whereas Rodney Brooks and many others have argued for real-world robotic embodiment as the golden path to AGI.
Virtual worlds suggest a possible middle path. An increasing number of AI researchers who recognize the cognitive importance of embodiment, but wish to avoid the complexities and limitations of current physical robots, are attracted to virtual embodiment as a path for advancing AI.
To concretely understand the potential power of virtual embodiment for AGI, consider one potential project I’ve been planning for a while: a virtual talking parrot. Imagine millions of talking parrots spread across different online virtual worlds - all communicating in simple English. Each parrot has its own local memories, its own individual knowledge and habits and likes and dislikes - but there’s also a common knowledge-base underlying all the parrots, which includes a common knowledge of English.
Next, suppose that an adaptive language learning algorithm is set up (based on one of the many available paradigms for such), so that the parrot-collective may continually improve its language understanding based on interactions with users. If things go well, then the parrots will get smarter and smarter at using language, as time goes on. And, of course, with better language capability, will come greater user appeal.
Yes, humans interacting with parrots in virtual worlds can be expected to try to teach the parrots ridiculous things, obscene things, and so forth. But still, when it comes down to it, even pranksters and jokesters will have more fun with a parrot that can communicate better, and will prefer a parrot whose statements are comprehensible.
And of course parrots are not the end of the story. Once the collective wisdom of throngs of human teachers has induced powerful language understanding in the collective bird-brain, this language understanding (and the commonsense understanding coming along with it) will be useful for other purposes as well. Humanoid avatars - both human-baby avatars that may serve as more rewarding virtual companions than parrots or other virtual animals; and language-savvy human-adult avatars serving various useful and entertaining functions in online virtual worlds and games. Once AI’s have learned enough that they can flexibly and adaptively explore online virtual worlds (and the Internet generally) and gather information according to their own goals using their linguistic facilities, it’s easy to envision dramatic acceleration in their growth and understanding.
A baby AI has a lot of disadvantages compared to a baby human being: it lacks the intricate set of inductive biases built into the human brain, and it also lacks a set of teachers with a similar form and psyche to it … and for that matter, it lacks a really rich body and world. However, the presence of thousands to millions of teachers constitutes a large advantage for the AI over human babies. And a flexible AI framework will be able to effectively exploit this advantage.
Clearly AI and virtual worlds have a great deal to offer each other - so we can expect that their intersection is going to lead to great benefit on both sides, over the next years. But there is much work to be done.
See also the previous AI article from CTN: The role of AI in Virtual Worlds.
