Chapter 96 16.5 Imposing fate on free will

Behavior wants to be free, but artificially generated behavior needs to be regulated and controlled if it is to be used by humans.We want Robbie the Robot or Bugs Bunny to be able to do things on their own without our supervision.Meanwhile, not everything that Robbie or Bugs do is productive.How can we give robots, or disembodied robots, or artificial life of any kind a license to act freely, while still continuing to channel them into being useful to us? A Carnegie Mellon University research project on interactive literature has unexpectedly revealed part of the answer to this question.Joseph Bates, a researcher on the project, created a fictional world called "Oz," which is somewhat similar to Steven Strassman's small room in which John and Mary lived.In Oz there are characters, a physical setting, and a story—exactly the same trio as in classical drama.In traditional drama, the story tells the characters and the setting.In Oz, though, this relationship of control is slightly reversed; here, characters and circumstances shape the story.

Oz was created for fun.This fantasy virtual world is populated by autonomous robots and human-controlled characters.The point of the game is to involve people in creating the environment, the story, and the autonomous robots within it, without spoiling the storyline, and without being more than a bystander.David Selcher, who conceived the project, gives a great example: "Assuming we give you a digital version, there's no reason why you shouldn't have a cabin on the Pequod. You can talk to Chatting with Chief Mate Starbuck, who is tracking Moby Dick. There's plenty of room in the story for you to get involved without changing the plot."

The World of Oz touches on three frontiers of control research: How do you structure a story that allows for a certain amount of deviation while still revolving around a given ending? How to build an environment that can produce unexpected events? How to create autonomous yet controlled organisms? We went from Steven Strassman's "Tabletop Theater" to Joseph Bates' "Computational Theater."Bates imagined a theater with distributed control.The story becomes some kind of co-evolution, perhaps only the outer boundaries of which are pre-set.You can enter a scene to exert influence to form another story line; you can also swim arm-in-arm with a synthetic Don Quixote, and face new fantasies together.Bates himself was most concerned with the human user's experience with Oz.Here's what he said about his project: "The question I research is: How do you give users a certain ending without depriving them of their freedom?"

My quest for a future of control is from the point of view of the creature rather than the creator, so I am rephrasing Bates' question as: How can I give an artificial life some kind of ending without depriving it of its freedom? Brad Graff believes that this shift in control changes the writers' goals. "We're creating something completely different. I'm not creating a story, I'm creating a world. I'm creating a personality, not dialogue and action between characters." It was only when I had the chance to play with these artificial characters that Bates developed that I realized how much fun pets with personalities can be.Bates called his pet "Round Button."There are three small round buckles: blue, red, and yellow.These little round buttons are elastic spheres with two eyes.They bounce around in a simple world of steps and caves.Each color of the small round buckle has been programmed with a set of distinctive behavior patterns.One color is shy, another is aggressive, and still another is imitative.When a small round button threatens another small round button, the aggressive small round button will show its teeth and claws to scare off the threat; the shy type will tremble and run away.

Under normal circumstances, these little round buttons will jump around in their own group, doing some things that small round buttons will do.However, if someone enters their world by inserting a cursor in their space, they will interact with the visitor.They may follow you around, or avoid you, or wait until you leave before continuing to harass other little round buttons.You are indeed in this game, but you can't control the situation here. I got a clearer feel for future pet controls from a proto world.This world is a kind of expansion of the world of Bates' little round button.A virtual reality research team at Fujitsu Laboratories in Japan selected characters similar to the small round buttons and processed them into lifelike virtual three-dimensional characters.I watched a live demo by a guy in a clunky VR headset and data gloves.

He was in the magical underwater world.A misty underwater castle shimmers in the far-reaching background.Several ancient Greek columns and chest-high seagrass dot the play area in front of you.Three "jellyfish" swim around, and a small shark-like fish swims around.Jellyfish, which look like mushrooms and are about the size of a dog, change color depending on their mood or behavioral state.When the three of them play by themselves, they are blue.At this time, they can bounce around tirelessly.And if the avatar beckons them over, they bounce excitedly, turn orange in color, and jump up and down like friendly puppies waiting to chase a stick.They close their eyes with a blissful expression when the virtual person shows them concern.The dude can also summon a far-off, less friendly fish with a blue laser beam from his index finger for a long-distance petting.This action will change the color of the fish and also make it interested in humans, so that it will get closer and swim around - but, like a cat, it will not follow you Very close - whenever the blue light touches the fish now and then, it will do the same.

Even from the outside, these artificial characters who are active in a public three-dimensional space, have a certain three-dimensional shape, and have some autonomous behaviors obviously have different characteristics.I can imagine going on adventures with them.I can imagine them as Jurassic dinosaurs, and I'm really intimidated by them.When the virtual fish swims too close to the head, even that Fujitsu man crouches in terror. "Virtual reality," says Graff, "is only fun if it's populated by interesting characters." Patty Mays is an artificial life researcher at the MIT Media Lab.She absolutely hates the kind of virtual reality that can only be entered with glasses and gloves, because the clothing is really "too artificial" and too restrictive.So she and her colleague Sandy Pentland figured out another way to interact with virtual creatures.Her system, called ALIVE, allows people to interact with animated creatures through computer screens and cameras.The camera is directed at the human participant, embedding the observer in the world he or she sees on the computer screen.

This clever design evokes a real sense of intimacy.I can interact with the little "hamster" on the screen by moving my arm.These hamsters look like toasters on wheels, but they are small creatures that can find their own goals and have a rich set of motives, feelings and reactions.When the hamsters were hungry for a while, they wandered around the enclosure in search of "food."They will find their own companions, and sometimes chase each other.If I move too quickly, they will run away.If I move my palms slowly, they will follow my hand out of curiosity.These hamsters will sit up and beg for food.And when they are tired from playing, they lie down and sleep.They are something between a robot and an animated animal, just a few steps away from a real virtual character.

Right now, Patty Mays is trying to teach the creatures "how to do the right thing."She wants the creatures she creates to learn through their experiences in the environment without being too supervised by humans.Jurassic dinosaurs wouldn't be real characters if they couldn't learn.If a human avatar can't learn, it's hardly practical to create it.Following the Containment Architecture Model, Mays is constructing a hierarchy of algorithms so that her creations are not only adaptive, but can direct themselves to more complex patterns of behavior, and—as an integral part of this overall design— —and allow their purpose to emerge naturally from the action.

Animators at Disney and Pixar were nearly flabbergasted by the idea, but one day Mickey Mouse will have the ability to speak for himself.