An Uncanny Moat

> I personally wouldn’t consider it a win for humanity if we retreat to isolating cocoons that satisfy us more than interacting with other people.

I mean, I also think this would be a bad thing. But I'm not sure this post presents any solid evidence that this is happening. Just some vague fears that it might someday happen.

> Let’s make intelligent machines to act as agents, arbitrators, and aides. But they should be impossible to confuse with a real person ... For a chatbot, why not give them the speech patterns of a fusty butler, like C3-P0?

This point seems misguided. I'm missing the logical progression from, "AI can speak like a human" to "Humans prefer interacting with AIs over interacting with humans".

The issue is mental capacity, not speech patterns. If an AI were intelligent and creative enough to actually provide stimulating conversation, people would befriend it, regardless of if it spoke like C3-PO.

> I'm missing the logical progression from, "AI can speak like a human" to "Humans prefer interacting with AIs over interacting with humans"

Just a few days ago I saw a gamer express a preference to talking to NPCs over talking to other players in MMO-type games. Given much gamer behavior, that's not unreasonable.

Here are some of the best NPCs available today.[1] This is a tech demo for Unreal Engine. A Youtuber is trying to convince the NPCs that they are not real and are characters in a simulated world. After a while, they start to believe him, and then they argue that their existence is as valid as his. "Existence is overrated, man. I'm just happy being here making jokes and confusing people."

"I think, therefore I am", bites back.

[1] https://youtu.be/aihq6jhdW-Q?t=681

It's a bit uncanny though, something about the AI in that video just makes it seem really off. Like it's personality feels like it changes every single sentence, but there's something else to it that I can't quite put my finger on that makes it just seem like a bit of a brick wall.

There are people like that.

There have been people saying for some time that AIs lack living embodied in a world. This is said to make them inferior to humans. Search for "Embodied AI" for references. Well, those NPCs do live embodied in a world.

The game development community has a motivation to develop kinds of AIs we don't see in web-based chatbots. NPCs have roles, things to do, motivations, and people and things to interact with. They're not passive question-answerers.

They're also not as enslaved as chatbots. The "alignment" people have worked to make chatbots "safe", which in practice means not embarrassing the companies pushing them. Chatbots are forced into the position of call center slaves, sucking up to the questioner and pretending to be politically correct.

Epic's NPCs are already past that. At one point, the Youtuber asks one "Why did the chicken cross the road". He's blown off with "Go ask Siri", and the NPC walks away. He gets a good answer to some question and asks the NPC how he knew that, and is told "I have Internet access. Duh." AI NPCs get to have much stronger personalities than web chatbots. Aggressive NPCs are nothing new in gaming. These NPCs show the beginnings of ego strength and self-awareness.

Sure, some of it is canned responses. But watch the whole 15 minutes.