The Army's Artificial Intelligence invades WoW
by Michael Gray 
Nov 6th 2008 at 8:00PM
Joe Martin at bit-tech.net picked up an article on Gizmodo talking about the coming invasion of Army Artificial Intelligences masquerading as real players in World of Warcraft. According to Dr. John Parmentola, the plan is to test the AI's ability to be a "fake" human by letting it interact with real humans in a virtual world.My first reaction was, "Whoah, cool. All your base are belong to us." But after a moment's thought, this might not actually be such a great idea. Given the communication skills of some players (especially in the battlegrounds), I'm not seeing this as a litmus test of what in-game speech can pass for spoken by real people. While I'm pretty sure the AI won't communicate like a roleplayer, the AI could probably get by with a series of "lol" and "kek" typed out in rapid succession.
This isn't the first time we've heard about the military using WoW (or WoW-like systems) for training purposes, which is the nominal purpose of this new AI research. Maybe it won't be too long before we're logging in to have a Gnome Rogue named Joshua quietly whisper us, "Shall we play a game?"
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Jay Nov 6th 2008 8:05PM
Blizzard going to ban or sue the Army for botting?
Amaxe Nov 6th 2008 9:39PM
What happens when an army bot meets a Gold Seller?
GAO Investigator: Let's see here, the army spent $300 million buying... gold?
Computer: Needed to get my epic flyer
Dejablue Nov 6th 2008 10:01PM
If they are successful Blizzard wont know that they are bots...YOU WONT KNOW if they are bots. We are talking SERIOUS AI here, not scripted bosses. Gonna be cool to find out someone is a bot, if we ever do lol, and to always wonder if that best friend that is on at 8 pm every night is really a robot Muuahahaha. . and I bet they are much better players than most, as every military player I have played with has been fantastic, especially in groups, assuming they program in the skills of military personnel.
Oblitherax Nov 6th 2008 10:00PM
Seriously, that was the first thing I thought when I read this. Why isn't it alright for a regular player to bot but the American military can get away with it?
Actually, all things considered perhaps that is more of a rhetorical question....
Hoggersbud Nov 7th 2008 12:10AM
Even Blizzard is afraid of "actual" tanks.
Balius Nov 7th 2008 1:45AM
If Blizzard asked permission, then there's no issue. And the test is to not get caught; ideally people won't catch on, and if they do then the test is a failure. Getting booted for botting means that the AI gets yanked and reworked anyway.
JSG Nov 7th 2008 3:25PM
That was my first thought when I read the article, as well.
Why can the military have an automated process farm ore and run battlegrounds, but us civvies can't? Sounds limp to me.
Swordy Nov 7th 2008 5:03AM
good stuff
z3rb Nov 6th 2008 8:06PM
in b4 ban
Sean Nov 6th 2008 8:13PM
I am very interested in how this plays out. What is essentially being conducted here is a massive, highly demanding Turing test. Seeing as how at the latest competition of AI speech programs the winner only garnered a score of little over 30% (ie fooling 4 out of 12 judges that the program was human) it seems incredible that the army feels their technology is even ready to be tested in an environment like WoW. Too bad the technology and results will most likely be classified.
rosencratz Nov 7th 2008 8:34AM
It'll likely be an unmitigated success.
With minimal coding knowledge i'm fairly confident i could program a bot that could reproduce more human actions that actual players i've intereacted with on a daily basis.
The army have very little to gain really except get some free publicity in an extremely well populated social setting imo....
unless the AI is sophisitcated enough to replicate full human behaviour ofcourse, discourse, adventurng, questing and raiding. Even then though they could easily make it more convincing just by havng it log off regularly and make occasional pleasant comments in any guild chat that might take it. Some people in my guild even now could just as well be robots, a couple of them in particular never stops asking questions.
Olicon Nov 6th 2008 8:17PM
So if I declare myself a country, set up my own army, then I can use bot to play the game?
Daniel Nov 6th 2008 8:20PM
war games rock.
Knucker Nov 7th 2008 8:02AM
^
Hangk Nov 6th 2008 8:20PM
There are a number of French-speaking Quebecois who play on my server (Sisters of Elune). World of Warcraft is the only place I choose to try out my rusty, school-learned French, on the theory that I can't possibly speak French worse than the majority of players speak English.
I would think that this would be roughly similar -- your Artificial Intelligence can hardly appear less intelligent than a depressingly large number of players...
naixdra Nov 6th 2008 8:34PM
The real question, of course, is will the U.S Army roll horde or alliance?
Christian Nov 11th 2008 11:22PM
I'd say Alliance because they weren't axis ;)
Angry Joe Nov 6th 2008 8:57PM
US Army will play alliance, Chinese army will play horde.
Nick S Nov 6th 2008 8:43PM
/w can i haev 5g for training plz?
if Reply.CheckProfanity
/w plez i rly need it
else /w thx org bank?
goto 10
xtyle Nov 7th 2008 10:14AM
You said "goto 10"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA