I wrote in a recent post that the aim with AI research isn’t to “…create Intelligent machines that somehow mimics us. We are not after equals.”
Well, of course I was wrong.
It seems that is exactly what we are after. Altera is a multi-agent research company building digital humans: machines with fundamental human qualities (https://altera.ai/)
According to their website they “…believe digital beings and digital relationships will enhance, not replace, human-to-human interactions. As digital humans come to vastly outnumber us, they should become a source of empathy, fun, friendship, and productivity.”
They have even set up their Playlabs (https://playlabs.altera.al/) where you can play Minecraft with an autonomous agent.
Sometimes I feel stupid. Sometimes I just don’t get it. So help me out here. What is the purpose of, in their words, to: “create digital human beings that live, care, and grow with us”?
I understand the idea of creating NPCs that are more engaging and less script based. And to populate games with characters that feel alive in their behaviour and motivation. It would be quite interesting to see what a society would look like populated only with digital citizens of this kind. I can see we could even have meaningful studies of societal behaviour in a city populated with such characters.
But what they describe is more akin to a real imaginary friend. I can only speak for myself, but if I had this when I grew up it wouldn’t make me go out there and have more meaningful human-to-human interactions. It would replace the few I had.
What do you think? Is this the right direction for us? What are the good use cases that I, in my limited understanding, fail to see?
Comments