This is an abbreviated introduction of the paper presented at the ISAS 98 and SCI 98 conferences - Orlando, Florida - July, 1998,
The full version, including graphics (diagrams and schemata) will be available in the published conference proceedings.
Synthetic Sentience on Demand, as a Strategic Commodity Resource
Charles Ostman
Senior Fellow - Institute for Global Futures
Faculty - San Francisco State University
tel 510 549 0129 fax 510 9689
charles000@aol.com
* Synthetic sentience as an Engineerable Process
* Synthetic sentience as a strategic resource
* I will CRUSH your opponents with my superior knowledge . . .
* The Internet as an Organism
* We Are Becoming Emmersed into an Irreversible Human/Internet Symbiosis
* As intelligent agents abound, so does our increased dependancy upon them
* Agents on demand, today . . .
* Bots on the loose . . . spreading, multiplying, infesting everywhere * In the beginning . . .
* Knowledge Engineering as an Industry, and the Spawning of the "Next Generation" of Intelligent Agents, Artificial Organisms
* The asthetics of engagement, and the reward for participation * Virtual Entertainment in a Virtual World
* Sensory Seduction as an Engineered Process, Invokation of Rapture as an Event Cue
* Intelligent Agents as a Mechanism for Ergonomic Enhancement of Interactive Environments, and Demographic Data Extraction
* Xenomorphic Avatars as Virtual Character Entities
* A Simple Model of an Organelle Component Hierarchy, and Complexity Layering as Would Apply to the Construction of a Synthetic Organism Xenomorph
* Self Evolving Personality Organelles, Virtual Emotion Constructors, Emotional Sentience as an Entertainment Commodity
* The Need for Bi-Directional, Vicarious Existance Entities as an Experiencial Entertainment Medium
* Rentable Organisms, Avatars on Loan, Disposable Personality Entities
* The "Virtual Shopping Mall" Example . . .
* "Amusement Parks" in Cyberspace? *
Abstract
Without question, there is a state of change at hand, the rate of which itself is an acceleration vector never before experienced in all of known recorded human history. The contextual relationships between rapidly evolving technologies, ever expanding volumes and complexities of information resources, and socio-economic systems which are being spawned from a domain which I refer to as the "virtual terraform", are going to reshape almost every aspect of life as it is currently understood to be.
To study the nuances and implications of this synergistic codependancy process is to empower oneself to become an adaptable entity, capable of evolving, and utilizing the maximum potential functionality of the tools embedded into what is becoming an interactive, bidirectional experiencial conveyance system, which can be referred to as the "media matrix". "
In that context, at the very top of the list, is the advent of synthetic sentience as a strategic resource, the internet system itself functioning as an evolvable system, and the deployment of advanced autonomous agent systems and "synthetic environments" populated with virtual communities of agent entities which utilize GP (genetic programming), neural net and related processes, and forms of process dynamics which instigate and foster the enterprise of inter-agent communications, conditionalized knowledge engineering, and "spawnable" process modalities which enhance (or even exceed) human capacity for decision rendering for mission critical applications. In essense, it is my belief (as well as a growing number of other participants in this arena of development) that knowledge velocity, scale, and complexity are rapidly exceeding human capacity for effective decision rendering under duress, in ever shorter time cycle increments.
Compression in decision boundary temporal domains is tracking directly with compression in functionality (complexity and scale) domains, thus placing a rapidly accelerating "pressure topology" on the surface of the "process dynamic manifold" from which policy, and strategic decision rendering can be evoked, as a process. The future I had speculated upon even just a few short years ago is already coming to life. Knowledge itself is even being compressed into shorter useful lifetime cycle windows. We are rapidly entering into a realm where decision rendering, as a mission critical process, will will simply exceed human capacity. At the threshold of crossing that event horizon, the ability to have access to the virtual terraform, populated with a potentially infinite number of intelligent agents and sentient entities, will no longer be an interesting luxury. It will become an absolute requirement.
* Synthetic Sentience as an Engineerable Process
Synthetic sentience, as an engineerable process, is rapidly emmerging from the obscure realms of academic interest, or a narrowly defined range of industrial and military applications, and becoming translated into a viable, commercial commodity. Indeed, numerous projects currently exist, in various stages of development which are specifically engineered as "synthetic sentience" engines.
Concepts which were once considered to be strictly confined to the wispy realms of science fiction are being translated into functional hardware and software components, which in turn are destined to become the "organistic subcomponents" of the global internet organism. Demonstrated at the world's first Virtual Humans Conference, held in Los Angeles, the equivilant of emotional sentience displayed as a process. Actually, the majority of demonstrations offered by various vendors were much more in the realm of physical human modelling, interactive biokinetics, and the tools for creating the 3D interface environments that these "virtual humans" would reside in.
Two notable examples were offered which shed light on the more compelling artificial intelligence components which could truly bring the virtual humans "to life". Offering an asthetically appealing, and functionally "correct" human form is, of course, the primary initial attraction "event" in the enterprise of luring real human participation in a synthetic environment. The quality of emotional interaction, however, is the stimulus which instigates a continued commitment to participation. To this end, the work demonstrated by Professor Daniel Thalmann, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, clearly indicated the direction this pursuit is aimed at. In his "virtual garden" example, a fully rendered, realtime synthetic environment, populated by approximately 20 humans, both male and female, would encounter each other at seemingly random intervals of activity. If any two or more of these entities would approach each other to within a certain virtual "personal proximity" range, they would then attempt to communicate as an emotional event stimulus. If the results of the communication were "friendly", they would touch, walk around together, and essentially behave as "real" humans might in an emotionally interesting chance encounter.
That the synthetic environment was on such a scale, populated with that many humans interacting simultaneously, represented an impressive level of computational complexity. Even the asthetics of the humans, and their environment settings was enough to be genuinely engaging to witness. The other example of this type of work demonstrated, which was on an even larger "scale" of behavioral complexity and quasi-sentience, was that offered by Professor Paul Rosenbloom, from the University of Southern California. As he describes his efforts to develop "synthetic digital societies", he points out that his mission is to "create virtual minds with a unified theory of human cognition". He went on to describe his applied theories and processes, in which "neural net self learning behavioral and emotional modelling with synthetic human avatars" is the primary goal of his efforts. His development efforts have been primarily financed by military agencies, with particular emphasis in very large scale synthetic environment simulations of various battle field sites populated by an array of synthetic humans operating as opposing teams of "agent entities".
There is a significant point here, however. By the very nature of the conference participation, and by the published statement of its organizer, Dr. Sandra Helsel, this technology is being seen as the components for the next form of interactive emotionally ergonomic communication, virtual theater environments, intelligent "malls", and a myriad of other applications which will become commercially viable in the near future. As the editor of VR News, a leading trade journal representing the academic and commercial development of virtual reality applications, she offered this commentary to describe the significance of this event: "Two powerful forces are combining to open up the Virtual Humans marketplace. The first is the accelerating and tangible market interest now evident in all forms of Virtual Reality. The hype and the hope are at last giving way to solid commercial activity. Right across the board, from commercial training to entertainment systems, and from virtual engineering to heritage reconstructions, the market is maturing and growing, and multi-million dollar contract awards are no longer a rarity." "The second, inevitably, is the Internet.
Around a half-dozen on-line 3D communities are up and running, complete with their first-generation avatars. In a few years time there will be hundreds, and then thousands - social, cultural, commercial meeting places, visited daily by millions of people." "What is crystal clear is that these virtual environments need to have virtual people in them. On-line social and games communities are designed specifically for that purpose. Virtual cars, aircraft, houses, retail stores and factories are not just for looking at - they will be used by real people when they are built, and they too need virtual humans, to check out their accessibility and convenience, maintainability and safety.
Virtual shopping malls will have sales 'bots; historical reconstructions will have guides, sometimes taking the form of contemporary inhabitants; virtual fashion shows will have mannequins; virtual learning environments will have virtual teachers, demonstrators, and difficult customers." "Until recently, there was no virtual humans marketplace to speak of: just a few pioneering research groups - notably Prof. Badler's team at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Thalmanns in Switzerland - a handful of products, and a few significant projects each year. There is now an unmistakeable undercurrent of change, and of new interest. The leading VR software companies are building or licensing human modeling extensions; performance animation is becoming commonplace at marketing events, and is moving strongly into the TV and virtual studio field; standards discussions are under way in relation to humanoids for ergonomic testing."
* Synthetic Sentience as a Strategic Resource
In the realm of commercial agenting systems and protocols, quite a variety of options are available, both for the private and corporate user. The deployment of intelligent, interactive autonomous agents as a self functioning, dynamic system, accessable as a "resource node" on the internet extends far beyond general consumer applications. The examples cited above are only a very minimal suggestion to the totality of intelligent agent populations which are spreading rapidly throughout the realm of the "virtual terraform".
No longer merely a pasttime for the web hobbyist, an academic researcher, or even the tentative experimentation of a growing business enterprise, reliance upon knowledge engineering, as a deliverable commodity, is rapidly becoming a requirement for competitive survival. Indeed, a threshold will soon occur when the for strategic agent deployment will become an absolute, rather than an option, for commercial viability in a competitive marketplace. Decision rendering under duress is a process which has been studied in great detail, particularly in very large scale synthetic environment simulations developed for the military.
Sentience, as definable in part by the "awareness" of one's self, can in some cases be measured by the defensive posturing and maneuvoring that a "synthetic entity" will employ on its own behalf. In the arena of defensive reasoning and response activity interactions, the quality or "robustness" of the behavior can be judged not only by how well did the entity in question "survive" the implied threat or "trauma event" of the moment, but also, how effectively did it learn to adapt, and therefore "improve" its response to the next perceived threat event. To the extent that this type of defensive behavior can be codified into a functioning, evolvable, even predatory entity, has recently been deployed beyond merely the realms of academic research, or even military applications development.
In a market environment where the new currency is time, and commodity of highest value is the aquisition of conditionalized knowledge and its immediate application, there is little if any margin for error or misjudgement. Increased dependancy on not only "engineered knowledge", but also on synthetically enhanced reasoning and deduction, will become a strategic imperative to almost all functioning business operations. The synergistic combination of this new market environment, the drastic increase in "internet connectivity", and the technologies which are about to become available as "modular components" embedded in this massive connectivity grid is the socio-economic breeding ground for this newly emmerging "synthetic sentience" based product line. These are the precursory ingrediants for spawning an environment in which the global internet system begins to take on "organic" properties.
Self modifying, self organizing, "hyper switch" networks, routing the "activity stream" events of advanced artifical intelligence driven agent entities, which in turn generate synthetically driven "decision rendering" processes, are all properties that one could assign to a macro system "pseudo organsim". This model is futher enhanced by the continued dependance, by the human population, on the "health" of the organism, i.e., the internet system and its "organic" features, to provide the very essence of life in terms of business, work, education, and entertainment.
* I will CRUSH your opponents with my superior knowledge . . .
Competitive, even "predatory" knowledge manipulation and engineering, as a process, is being seen as a strategic resource. In a business environment driven by an ever increasing dependancy for near realtime information access, and intelligent processing, this type of a "virtual" resource base becomes as strategically important as any other assets a business can include in its "arsenal" of available resources.
The full version of this paper, complete with graphics (diagrams and schemata) will be available in the published ISAS 98 / SCI 98 conference procedings.