The Pentagon and Homeland Security had a baby....His name is Edd

[Joanne98]

Cognitive scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute claim to have created a Second Life avatar with the reasoning skills of a four-year-old child.

The artificial child, “Eddie,” runs on an RPI supercomputer, and comes from a lab funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Selmer Bringsjord, leader of the RPI research team that created “Eddie,” says applications for the tyke might include “homeland defense.”

That’s because Eddie also goes by the name, “Edd.”

And Edd (below) is a baddass homeland security robot who looks like the villainous machine in the film, Robocop. Both Eddie and Edd are based on the Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Architecture for “Living” Systems, or RASCALS, an artificial life form platform created for military and intelligence operations.

Eddie’s supercomputing descendants will be much more capable of mimicking humans than he is.

“Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things.” – Bringsjord

The Pentagon and Homeland Security would then be free to use synthetic characters as spies inworld, for example. There they will able to operate undetected, and unhindered by the pangs of a truly human conscience.

Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Troy, N.Y. – Today’s video games and online virtual worlds give users the freedom to create characters in the digital domain that look and seem more human than ever before. But despite having your hair, your height, and your hazel eyes, your avatar is still little more than just a pretty face.

“Our aim is not to construct a computational theory that explains and predicts actual human behavior, but rather to build artificial agents made more interesting and useful by their ability to ascribe mental states to other agents, reason about such states, and have — as avatars — states that are correlates to those experienced by humans,” Bringsjord said. “Applications include entertainment and gaming, but also education and homeland defense.”

http://www.physorg.com/news124368610.html

[seasat]

1. I hear it goes by it's nickname...Skynet n/t

[Joanne98]

2. I think this is new.

[gtar100]

3. So our defense systems are in the hands of a four-year old.

Nothing new here. (kidding)

Truly fascinating stuff. I do, however, find it a little disturbing that the master minds behind it fantasize about developing an intelligence "unhindered by the pangs of a truly human conscience." To my mind, that precludes intelligence, and makes the entity just some sort of eating machine that knows only what it wants, and doesn't care about the whole of its existence which would include other people, other species, and a sustaining environment.

Oh my god! I think the prototypes are among us. And they're called republicans!

[Nihil]

4. Good job that 4 yr-olds don't have temper tantrums ... oh, wait ...

> I do, however, find it a little disturbing that the master minds behind
> it fantasize about developing an intelligence "unhindered by the pangs
> of a truly human conscience."

Personally, I think it is the developers who are "unhindered by the pangs
of a truly human conscience" if they believe that this course of action
is the right thing to do.

[Orsino]

6. Yeah. Beats the three-year-old mentalities running DoD now. n/t

[TechBear_Seattle]

5. "Would. You. Like. To. Play. A. Game?"

Or perhaps, "I'm sorry, Dave, but I cannot allow you to do that."

All we need now is a tech by the name of Ed and we will have the humorous highjinks of "Ed, Edd and Eddie." :eyes:

Added link to Wikipedia for the culturally impared.

[hunter]

7. Hey, Eddie. Look at the pretty dog. He's smiling!

I'll bet he'd just love for you to pet him.



:eyes:

Nope, I just don't see it. For at least 50,000 years human beings have been honing their deceptive ways. Our governments have in their employ legions of very experienced sociopaths. Poor little Eddie won't survive long on the mean streets of the human world. In a very short time someone will be stalking about in his skin like the Bug in Men In Black.

Bug: Place projectile weapon on the ground.
Edgar: You can have my gun, when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Bug: Your proposal is acceptable.