Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

The problem with Second-Life is … it just sucks!

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Ok, here’s my take on it. If I had to sum second-life up in a sentence it would be “Its just IRC with crappy avatars”. Far too many people think that its a game that you “play”. But it isn’t, its a virtual world that tries to provide real world metaphors so that users can be part of virtual communities, set up virtual businesses, make money, or simply lounge around try to look cool. There’s nothing wrong with that … but it just isnt compelling. Please spare me all that disingenuous crap that there’s 2 million registered users so that means it must be really popular! Hell … I registered for a free hotmail account once … I cant remember the last time I actually used it … 😉

For ages I’ve been refusing to sign up for an account on the grounds, rather facetiously, that I have a real-life, and I dont want to waste it away in an environment I knew I would loose interest in. But the other day I decided I’d give it a try. It took me about two hours to realise I didn’t like the clunky interface and crappy graphics, and further two hours to realise I actually hated the fact that it wasnt really a game.

My ulterior motive for signing up was to see how I could use the scripting engine to create some real world physics simulations, and i’m not sure what engine they are using its supposed to Havok2, but it doesnt feel like Havok at all.

As for the real world metaphor …. it still sucks, and I think its given far more credit than it deserves.

To understand my take on this this check this out: The current stats on www.secondlife.com are:

Total Residents: 1.9250,245
Logged In the Last 60 Days: 789,400
Online Now: 8,661
US$ Spent Last 24h : $652,969
LindeX Activity Last 24h: $135,163

Here’s goes – To begin with 2 Million registered users doesnt equate to 2 million active users. I’ve been trying to find out if the 789,400 users logged in the last 60 days, is the number of unique residents who have been active, or is it, as I suspect, the number of times anyone has logged in. Why do I suspect that? Well for arguments sake lets say each person logs in maybe twice a day ( assuming they have a real life ) that means in 60 days an individual would log in 120 times therefore 789,400 / 120 = 6579 (which I’ve rounded up). This isnt too far off the number of users currently online. Is that because like any game you tend to have a hard core group of users plus a bunch of casual users? Lets be generous lets say that the ballpark is really more like 12,000 active users. Even with that its not an enormous community. You can contrast this with other MMORPG like World of Warcraft which surpassed 5 Million registered users in December 2005! And theres a hell of a lot more than 12,000 people online in that virtual world at any one point in time than your ever likely to see in Second Life. Yes I know the press are raving that Second Life might actually exceed WoW’s number of registerd users … but trust me SL has a long way to catch up!

Whats is impressive about SL is that approx 12,000 active users somehow managed to spend $652,969 in Second Life in 24 hours. Which roughly equates to $55 per user in a 24 hour period. So what are these people spending their money on? I have a theory about that too. To begin with you can buy real world goods in Second Life, i.e. a Dell PC, boooks through Amazon etc. Which is what drives up the real $US figure, and thats really cool … its like IRC with crappy avatars but you have a shopping interface 😉

The Linden transactions for virtual goods on the other hand are a different matter. Firstly the actual reported Linden figures can be easily influenced if people know how to as reported by Reuters, to date this isnt a defect Linden Labs have managed to resolve, at least not to my knowledge, and they’ve not been commenting on it.

Secondly the types of businesses that are making profits in SL kind of fall into the gold-rush model. Back when Gold Miners used to descend on a midwest town with hopes of striking it rich, generally the only people who made any money where those who were selling Pots, Pans, Shovels, and supplies to the miners. Its much the same with Second Life. Avatar Designer and Virtual Real estate developers are making a profit selling Virtual wares. There is one additional group thats making a lot of money too, and thats the sex industry – and yes it has found its way into Second Life. You can trade you Linden’s for virtual pole dances, the services of a virtual escort or just buy images! I guess the notion that Pornography Drives Technology is still true even today. Personally I dont see the attraction certainly not with the graphics engine SL uses eeek … pixelated porn …*shudder* … maybe I’m just old fashioned but what’s wrong with going out with real women?

Recently Second Life has become a bit of a gimmick for real world companies many of which have set up a Virtual prescence in Second Life in an attempt to make themselves look cool, and its been successful in that it has generated a lot of media attention. Hey even Talis have a Virtual Office in there … (were still trying to convince our CEO that our real offices should have Pool tables and jacuzzi’s too – but hes not buying into it! C’mon Dave you know you want to 😉 )

Unfortunatly these gimmicks have a tendency to backfire Sun was berated recently for holding a developers Q&A session about the release of Open Source Java in Second Life. Dell also fell foul of this, and so have others.

As a game Second Life is just boring after your first twenty minutes flying around like superman dishing out your card to anyone with an avatar that looks like a hot chick – erm … but they might not be. Note to self: Dont put any real details into SL profile!

As metaphor for the real world Second Life isn’t compelling enough, at leasnt not for me. I’m not interested in buying virtual real estate, or setting up shop in there. If I want to buy from Dell or Amazon its a shed load quicker through a browser or using a phone than it is endlessly flying around and teleporting trying to find their virtual outlets, and trying to interact with the clunky UI. Which means you cant be task oriented in there you actually have to want to turn buying goods into an adventure to be attracted to SL as a metaphor for getting real world activities done and I just don’t buy into that. I guess that’s why they only have 12,000 out of 2 million users active?

Anyway I’m off to battle the forces of darkness in World of Warcraft!

Book Review: How to survive a robot uprising

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How to survive a robot uprising
How to survive a robot uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Agains the Coming Rebellion
by Daniel H Wilson

This is easily one of the funniest books I’ve ever read! In a nutshell its a survival guide written by robotoscist Daniel H Wilson that aims to prepare the reader with a load of useful tips on how best to quash a robot mutiny. Wilson borrows from famous sci fi movies and then uses scientific fact to predict what robots might be like in the future. It’s a tongue in cheek vision of the future but also a legitimate introduction to contemporary robotics.

After reading the book I wanted to find out more about the author, and came across this video which is part of the Google Author Series. Daniel describes why he wrote the book and its also incredibly funny to watch and listen to.

I thoroughly recommend this book and if you have the time watch the google video you wont be disappointed.

Robot Introspection: Self Modeling.

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Josh Bongard, Victor Zykov and Hod Lipson over at Cornell University have been working on a very interesting research project developing a small robot that can create an “internal model” of itself and then use that model to generate successful motor patterns for movement, before and after damage.

This is based on the notion that higher order animals, like ourselves, have some form of an “internal model”, even though we dont necessarily think about it consciously, yet it helps us to plan complex action and understand their consequences. For example we know if we fall from a great height we could break our legs, if we put our hand through a flame it will burn ( and yes thats generally a bad thing! ) – more fundementally we know we have two arms, two legs, we know where they are in relation to each other and we understand how to use them, as well as what their limitations are.

The guys at Cornell have succeeded in demonstrating how a small long legged robot can synthesize a model of its own topology and then based on this model it can navigate around a small environment and in doing so synthesizes new behaviour before and after it has been damaged, Think of it in terms of a person who has to get from one side of a burning room to an exit on the other side and cant walk because his/her legs are damaged – most humans wont simply lay down and wait, we would crawl, or drag ourselves along.

Here’s a picture of the robot they have developed

Is it just me or does their robot look a hell of a lot like those replicators from Stargate SG1?

You learn more about this research at the projects homepage here.

Here’s a really cool video of the robot in action.

Here’s a link to to their latest publication on the project entitled “Resilient Machines Through Continuous Self-Modelling“, which is well worth reading.

How soon to Artificial General Intelligence?

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I’ve been trying to read up on developments in Artificial Intelligence, my primary motivation for this has been in my own resurgent interest in the field. I studied Artificial Intelligence at the University of Birmingham and whilst my academic life was dominated by my interest in the subject, its something I lost touch with during the course of my professional career, with the exception of a stint dabbling using artificial neural networks at Rolls Royce in order to extrapolate trending in turbine engines over normal and prolonged usage.

Anyway I came across this Panel Discussion on google video. The panel discusses the question “What are the bottlenecks, and how soon to Artificial General Intelligence? If you have the time, then its well worth watching. I have to confess I was engrossed. To summarise the members of panel stated that the bottlenecks or obstacles currently preventing projects pushing towards AGI include:

  • Lack of Funding
  • Nature of current programming languages, which are viewed as being cumbersome to work with.
  • Building an emergent system, rather than a system that can be incrementally tested.
  • Not enough people involved in research in this field.
  • Too much polarisation in terms of what researchers believe defines Artificial Intelligence, and the wildly different approaches adopted by researchers.
  • The inherent complexity of building a system capable of the level of generalisation required.
  • Too much research in the field focuses on building solutions to “toy” problems which arent compelling enough to convince investors.
  • Our ignorance, how the hell do we build an intelligent machine? We dont even know what the goal is.
  • The lack of a common ontology and vocabulary to discuss the subject.

I wont bore you with the panel’s wildly varying assessment of how long it will take some believed within the next decade whilst others believe it will happen towards the end of this century. One of the most interesting questions posed was “Have we reached the status of being a science?”, the only panelist who answered stated “No, we’ve always been an Engineering discipline” – and I think its true to say that its one that is divided into entrenched groups not willing or able to work with each other.

The AI research community is seemingly still haemorrhaged into advocates of Strong AI and others who advocate Weak AI. There are those who believe the solution lies in mimicking the human brain, if you imitate the human brain closely enough you’ll end up with a conscious intelligent creature since we ourselves are proof of this. On the other hand there are those whole believe in a purely engineered solution, using software to study and accomplish specific problem solving or reasoning.

I’m concerned that in the last 10 years it appears the divisions within this discipline have grown wider, however im encouraged that one of the overriding and recurring points in this video is everyones agreement that in order to move forward more collaboration is needed. I’ll be following the initiatives mentioned in this talk closely at http://agiri.org/

I did it find it amusing when someone commented during the discussion that AI researchers were perhaps too familiar with science fiction and perhaps that was part of the problem! 🙂