Teaching AI to be Sociable - MIT Media Lab’s robot ready for Turing test this fall

“Eddie”, the robot AI showing social awereness in Second Life in March 2008

IEEE Spectrum writes about two different approaches to artificial intelligences that can respond intuitively to our needs. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has built Eddie, an AI that resides in the virtual world of Second Life and harnesses the power of a supercomputer to analyze a library of rules about human thinking. The other, MIT Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group, has built Leonardo, who is due for his first Turing test (if a human judge can’t tell the difference between another human and the AI through online conversation, then the bot will have passed the test). IEEE Spectrum: Teaching AI to be Sociable

Meanwhile, visionary artist and virtual world veteran Mark Stephen Meadows (author of “I, Avatar - The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life” - must read not only for VE and SL enthusiasts) works on avatars with a personality in his company Echo & Shadow. They provide tools to create “actors” – interactive characters, such as avatars, that are driven by artificial intelligence. If you want to know more about their approach and how you might profit from their development please feel free to contact me (I’m German/ich spreche deutsch, ist ja manchmal einfacher bei solch komplexen Themen ;-).