Richard Bartle and Richard Garriott: How humans should treat advanced AI characters
GamesBeat Summit 2022 returns with its largest event for leaders in gaming on April 26-28th. Reserve your spot here!
Pretty soon, we might all be the new citizens of the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. And if we’re going to do this right, it would be good to get some expert advice on the ethics around the metaverse.
One of the big issues that will come up — based on a conversation between gaming legends Richard Garriott de Cayeux, creator of the Ultima series, and Richard Bartle, the University of Essex professor who did seminal research on online games — is how to treat characters who have artificial intelligence.
In video games, we have no problem mowing down AI characters because they are so distinctly non-human in how they behave. But as AI technology improves and we populate these characters into a metaverse, we might do well to think about that. Bartle has discussed this topic at length in his new book, How to Be A God, which is about philosophy, theology, and computer games.
In a talk at GamesBeat Summit 2022 entitled “The new citizens of the metaverse” they discussed how AI-driven characters will replace the dumb non-player characters (NPCs) of current games. In the future, you might have a conversation for hours with these advanced AI characters — seemingly behaving like fellow avatars — without realizing they’re not human. But if we cross that threshold, what are the ethics and code of citizenry we should follow? How do we treat our fellow AI characters who are just as human as humans? Or should we not create them at all? It was a fascinating discussion, and it’s not just science fiction anymore, given the advances we’ve
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