US Army To Use MMOs For Turing Tests

Massively points out an article about new research projects for the US Army. One of the projects will evidently involve testing their AI capabilities in popular MMOs, including World of Warcraft and EVE Online. "They're working on creating 'photorealistic looking and acting human beings' that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang. 'I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they're responding,' Parmentola said. To test out the computer generated humans' 'humanity,' Parmentola and his researchers want to unleash some of their cyber Soldiers into so-called 'massively multi-player online games' such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online — games frequented by thousands of super-competitive human players in teams of virtual characters fighting battles that can last for days. 'We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they're good enough to convince humans that they're actually human,' he said."

eh , well what else do you call them?

[LingNoi]

into so-called 'massively multi-player online games' such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online

I read that as being "sarcastic", what else does the author of this so called, 'news post' call an MMO?

Interesting idea...

[celendis]

... until Blizzard cans their account for using a bot.

Intelligence ?

[Davemania]

You don't need intelligence let alone artificial intelligence to interact with people in those MMO games

Re:"military intelligence" oxymoron still works...

[mwvdlee]

MMO's are the most automated of games. They don't involve thought, they involve grinding, grinding, and more grinding.

So what you're saying is, MMO's are the perfect way to train virtual soldier AI.

Re:good idea wrong game

[Umrick]

While you don't need intelligence to play MMOs, they are the best test for a program designed to interact with other people due to the range of styles of communications.

Everything from "OMG!!!1!u sux" to "Prithee, but have ye a sledgehammer?"

It's a question of volume in EVE or WoW. Note they aren't trying to "build a better gold farming bot" but to use it for a Turing test type situation.

Its not combat related research...

[osir]

I doubt its at all what the military wants. The reasearch has nothing to do with fps's, or combat, or video games at all, its to do with human-human interaction where the focus is not completely on language. Computers can deal with spacial information a lot easier than irregular linguistic information. I think the goal is to have them 'fool' 'people' (yes, both in quotes), without tackling the hard problem of imitating spoken language.

Re:"military intelligence" oxymoron still works...

[ArsonSmith]

Actually for AI it's the exact opposite. Puzzle games are extremely easy for a computer due to the speed at which it can calculate all possible outcomes. Trying to convince people to put together a raid in an MMO requires a minimal amount of social skills. If all you're doing is grinding then you haven't really played much.

Re:"military intelligence" oxymoron still works...

[wasmoke]

Why would you say that? The reason our troops are so effective is because they can think on their feet. If a platoon commander is killed in action, the next guy down the chain of command will immediately step up and he knows what the mission is and how to get it done. It seems to me like you're thinking of the old time battles where the two opposing factions would line up on either side of a line and keep shooting at each other until one side was all dead.

Although, I guess I am assuming you live in the U.S. I'd be interested to know how your military works, if you're from another country.