[ExI] Killer apps for AI-controlled avatars in virtual worlds ??

[Benjamin Goertzel]

Hi,

Well one application is obvious, considering the spread of the
> pixel-sex trade in Second Life, and it wouldn't require a lot of
> high-level intelligence to animate virtual prostitutes.



But I wonder if anyone would really like this, apart from the
immediate novelty value?  I don't regularly
make use of prostitutes in the physical or virtual world,
so I don't have a great understanding of the psychology of
people who do....  But isn't the fact that it's a HUMAN at
the other end of the avatar important for the psychology
of e-sex?  At least, I think this would require a very convincing
illusion of humanity.  But of course, giving a convincing illusion
of humanity in that particular context might not be very hard....

A student of mine once wrote a chat bot that impersonated
a hot and horny young 15 year old in online chat rooms.  It
did very well and attracted a lot of email ;-p

But for more general applications, thinking along the lines of more
> intelligently interactive PDAs should be a good bet. More
> sophisticated phone answering, with intelligent message-taking
> (ensuring the important points are taken), prioritization and
> forwarding;  flexibly interactive appointment-taking on your behalf --
> these are areas where we expect a human and are disappointed when we
> get a machine.  If the machine agent can effectively represent the
> specifics of its principle in such cases when the principle isn't
> available, it should be a net positive.


Yah, I see ... the famous virtual secretary, which according to the AI
gurus of the 1960's was "right around the corner" ;-)

Presumably with a direct link into "Google Docs and Spreadsheets" +
Google Calendar or some such...


Another area where personality counts, but doesn't require a high
> level of intelligence, is in artificial pets.


That is quite possibly where we'll start ... I already have thought a
lot about that space though, which is why my question was about
humanlike avatars specifically...


>
> Similarly, but more suited to physical robotics, would be therapeutic
> devices that sense affect and respond with appropriate motivational
> behavior.
>

That is interesting.  Ideally we would want to work with some
physical device that automatically senses affect from the person's
body and voice, though....  Sensing affect from text is hard, which is one
of the
problems with email and chat communication.  (Chat is better for
affect than email, but achieves this at great cost in terms of loss
of subtle non-emotional content).

-- Ben
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