The first thing that came to my mind watching the demo was the console based psychiatrist someone wrote for Linux. This program was basically reflecting everything back at you (“Why are you saying this?”, “What do you think this means?”), but if you ignored this pretty blatant avoidance of really intelligent answers, you could have a reasonably complicated conversation with this shrink. Milo does the same thing in one or two instances, basically asking the player (Claire) to elaborate on something he apparently didn’t couldn’t make much sense of.

The things Molyneux has added to the shrink program are basically (albeit impressive) new pieces of technology: Good movement recognition, image recognition and recognition of emotions in voices (although this seems to be tricky, which I think is why they restrict themselves to the more easily recognized ones such as “telling a joke”).

The important point here is: True intelligence is the extraction of symbolic (or logical) information from literal information (images, sounds). Manipulating symbols in a given manner, for example checking a text for grammatical correctness, which newer text processors can do pretty well, is “easy”. Of course there’s lots of kinks to be ironed out before it works, but in the end it is just processing of symbolic information and checking it versus a table of allowed combinations.

The main things Molyneux and his colleagues have been working on (apart from the simulation of Milo himself) all have to do with extracting information from raw data, and THIS is what allows true AI. If it works. So beware of MiloNet.

Secondly, I’m confused as to how long Molyneux has been working on Milo. 5 years or longer? On the one hand you say that it’s “been in development for years”, but at the same time it’s “definitely very early on in development”. That doesn’t seem to suggest that this technology will be living up to its already-ample hype any time soon, if ever. But then, some of us were already very skeptical about what’s been shown/promised so far, even without getting a first-hand glimpse.

I wonder about how scripted the events are…I picked up on a few things in the demonstration with Claire. Namely the part where Milo throws the goggles. I noticed Molyneux said that everyone reaches for them like they are really there. That leads me to believe that many people have experienced this event. Is Milo’s progress more on rails then it appears in the video?

Between my time as a salesman and my debate class in school (for game design), I learned a lot about the art of conversation. You can lead people in directions you want without them knowing it. I know the AI has to do this to some degree, but how much I wonder?

I know this is a huge leap in technology, but I can’t help but think of Seaman from the Dreamcast days. At least Milo isn’t as creepy as the fish/man/frog thing.

I doubt Molyneux would be stupid/insane enough to allow you to beat the hell out of Milo like in Black and White. Anyone with common sense or a shred of moral decency would understand the consequences of that choice. The ESRB would most likely give him hell…and if they didn’t, we all know Fox News would. At least this time they would actually have a legitimate reason for their attack.

Where you could take Milo in his adventure of life is an interesting thought though. How good or bad could you persuade him to be…it should be an interesting ride indeed.

Cheers,
Rob

In what ways is MIlo a game though? I mean, im very interested in the concept, but to who are the actually planning to sell it too( if it is being sold) and if they are not selling it, why show it in a microsoft game presentation?

Even though im very intrueged i have to say that these kind of developments are also scary because, as you stated, what are the limits? (plot of terminator movies anyone?) for all i know AI could be taking over computers if more Milo’s show their faces..

Im very interested in hearing more but dont tell me i didnt warn you about robots taking over and Arnie coming to save us.