ChatGPT meets Wargaming and the PhD

Had to be done, here's ChatGPT's evaluation of urban warfare.

What are the main challenges for an army fight in an urban environment?

There are several main challenges for an army fighting in an urban environment, including:

• Limited visibility and cover: Buildings and other structures in urban areas can block soldiers' line of sight, making it difficult to spot and engage the enemy.
• Close-quarters combat: Urban areas are often densely populated, which means that fighting will take place at close range, making it difficult to use heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery.
• Collateral damage: Urban areas are often densely populated, which means that there is a risk of causing significant civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure if heavy weapons are used.
• Guerrilla tactics: Insurgents or enemy forces may use guerrilla tactics, such as hit-and-run attacks and booby traps, making it difficult for an army to maintain control of an area.
• Lack of intelligence: It can be harder to gather accurate intelligence in an urban environment, as the enemy may be able to blend in with the civilian population, making it difficult to identify and locate them.
• Logistics: Urban areas are often densely packed and have limited road networks, making it difficult to move supplies and reinforcements in and out of the area.

And here's its thoughts on my PhD topic.

What are the main challenges in developing a wargame of urban conflict?

(thought a lot longer, but may just be load)

There are several main challenges in developing a wargame of urban conflict, including:

• Modeling the complexity of urban terrain: Urban areas are complex and dynamic environments, with a wide variety of structures, buildings, and infrastructure that can affect the movement and visibility of troops.
• Representing the impact of collateral damage: Urban areas are densely populated, which means that the use of heavy weapons can cause significant civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure. This needs to be accurately represented in the wargame to reflect the real-world consequences of military actions.
• Incorporating the human dimension: Urban areas are often home to diverse and complex human populations, which can affect the conduct of operations. This includes understanding the population dynamics, cultural, and political factors that affect the behavior of the civilian population, and the military-population relationship.
• Balancing realism and playability: Urban warfare is a complex and challenging environment, and accurately representing all the elements of urban combat in a wargame can make it less accessible and less engaging for players. Finding a balance between realism and playability is crucial to creating an engaging and meaningful wargame experience.
• Incorporating the new technology: Urban warfare often involve the use of a variety of technology, such as UAVs, Robotics, AI, and cyber warfare, which can be tricky to simulate in a wargame.
• Representing the legal and ethical considerations: Urban warfare often raises legal and ethical issues, such as the protection of civilians, the use of weapons in populated areas, and the occupation of territory. These considerations need to be incorporated into the wargame to provide players with a realistic and nuanced understanding of the complexities of urban warfare.

Science Museum Robots Exhibition

Met up with my mate Dave to go to the Science Museum's Robot exhibition at the weekend. Not bad at all (and also nice to see the old Apollo 10 capsule again - even if it's not in their main space exhibition for some reason - so people gaze in wonder at a model of the LEM but walk past the almost rusty looking piece of hardware that actually did fly around the moon!)

The exhibition is split into 4 main parts - mechanical automata, robots in fiction, creating a robot, and current robot examples. The focus is very much on humanoid robots, but pity not to see more cultural robots (C3PO, Robbie, B9/Lost In Space for example).

I'd certainly read about most of the "current" robots, and even seen a few, but great to see them in all in one place. Pity that they didn't have Kismet (although they had the Kings "copy"), and no space for Aibo (even though there was a robot cat!)

Highlights in image form below:

Henri Maillardet, the “Draughtsman-Writer”

Not my photo as I forgot to take one, but in some ways one of the most interesting things there. Brass discs encoded hand movements so that the "boy" could write poems and create drawings - all in 1800!

The Gemma Chan robot created when they tried a Gold standard Loebner prize/Turing test, not so good close up!

iCub - state of the art robot boy

NAO - keep looking for an excuse for Daden to buy one!

Kaspar - used with kids with ASD

A nice functional bot!

Zeno - mimics your facial expressions, sort of

Pepper - heard a bit about this one

Robothespian - manually controlled mainly

Kodomoroid - a typical Japanese "real" Android, convincing over Skype possibly

Telenoid - gives you hugs when you're on the phone to someone

Industrial bot meets 50s SF!

Asimo - not doing anything sadly

Harry - the trumpet player

We also took the 15min to see Last Supper by Giles Walker, a very atmospheric piece of 12 robots supposedly debating sin and death and swearing a lot, even if I couldn't work out what it was all about!

Loebner 2009 Video

Great video report from Erwin Van Lun of the 2009 Loebner prize. Having read (and analysed) the transcripts it's hardly surprising that none came close to winning. Looking closely at entering in 2010.

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Wolfram Blog : Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming!

http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/

This could be interesting - from the guy who created Mathematica - a plain language factual question answering system.

"It's going to be a website: www.wolframalpha.com. With one simple input field that gives access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms.

We're all working very hard right now to get Wolfram|Alpha ready to go live.

I think it's going to be pretty exciting. A new paradigm for using computers and the web.

That almost gets us to what people thought computers would be able to do 50 years ago!"

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Human WebGreeter Fails Turing Test

http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/199

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Creating a MegaBrain with TheBrain Mindmaps

http://blog.thebrain.com/megabrain/

I have Kurzweil's TheBrain on my laptop and have used it a bit, but not this extent!

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Humaniti 2100

I must try and get back into the habit of a Friday afternoon blog post. So here's something I've been putting together for a while on my Palm - it is unashamably direct and does not particularly hedge its bets - where's the fun in doing that?.

I still reckon that Greg Egan (in Diaspora) has probably got the most accurate view of how humanity may 'evolve' over the next few centuries. Inspired by him here's my take on where we could be by 2100.

NATURALS

Naturals are those who have refused any sort of body mod or digital existence. In 2100 there will be a frighteningly large number of people living (even in poverty) for whom this may be the only option. Increasingly though this is a moral choice. However general health advances mean that life expectancy is 100+, with good quality of life to 90+ for those in the developed world.

AUGMENTED

The Augmented are those who have taken advantage of the transformative technologies of genetic and nano engineering and digital/cyber mods, but who see their 'self' as purely their organic mind. If they use 'scapes and virtual worlds through avatars it is for specific, non-persistent, purposes. Augmentation itself may range fm slight (e.g. just regular use of an avatar or life-logging systems) to extreme (bio-electronic cyber-systems).

MULTIPLES

Multiples are those of organic descent who have created digital copies of themselves which exist persistently (and probably in multiple instances) in 'scapes across the globe, planets and (by 2200) the stars. I still think that 'uploading' a mind from the brain could be in the near-impossible category. lnstead the first 'copies' will come from explicit teaching/programming, quickly followed by automated learning from email & social media, and ultimately by eavesdropping on everything we do from birth - our lifelog becomes us.

The real challenge for multiples is the re-integration of learnt experiences. Copies can easily just copy data, but what about the organic prime? Again I think that uploading memories is probably a no-no, but in-silico memory accessed through some sort of personal agent or augmented reality (or even brain-jack) would seem achievable.

Freed of a corporeal existence the copies can explore the stars in starship borne 'scapes, and even be beamed from star to star at the speed of light (and bear in mind that since the Multiples sense of time is dependent only on processor clock speed the journey to Alpha Centauri could pass in seconds or millennia - again see Egan, this time in Permutation City).

But perhaps the most telling feature of Multiples is that they can be immortal - so whilst your organic atom based self may die your digital Multiples can live forever - perhaps we might even call them ghosts.

And if we can create simple Multiples now (and I think we can) then it means that we can create simple (multiple) immortality right now - and just think of the moral and ethical issues that raises.

(and if you doubt this whole section take a look at this recent DoD requirement)

DIGITALS

Digitals (who also normally exist as Multiples) are personality constructs that are not derived from an organic, living source. At their most basic, and in current tech terms, these could be virtual receptionists or game NPCs, but very shortly we'll be able to create autonomous, self-motivated avatars - the fore-runners of true digitals. We might also create Digitals from historic personalities, and we could even use software DNA to allow Digitals to breed and evolve (for what a baby Digital might experience read the opening of Egan's Diaspora). The key point is that within the virtual space Digitals are not differentiable from Multiples or the avatars of the Augmented.

GLEISNERS/ANDROIDS

But Multiples and Digitals need not be confined to virtual spaces. Once we have a digital self controlling an avatar body there is no reason why we can't have the same self controlling a robot body. Indeed in building our own AI engine we created a Sensor and Action mark-up language to isolate the AI 'brain' from the embodiment technology. So the same AI that controls a Second Life avatar could also control, and live through, an AIBO or ASIMO. Fast forward 50-100 years and our 'human-level' Multiples and Digitals can walk the atom-based physical worlds in human (or non-human) bodies (what Egan calls Gleisner robots). And whislt embodied Digitals may sound weird just think what it would be like, as the human root of a Multiple, to shake your own hand.

When I first wrote this I entitled it Humaniti 2200 - but I've now put it to 2100. For either date though it's a matter of degree - particularly for the 'organic' element. There is also though the potential of a 'singularity' effect; once we have one fully fledged Digital we could rapidly clone or evolve it (or it could clone or evolve itself) so that the Digital population could go from single figures to thousands to millions in years or decades.

So how might percentages or numbers go? This is probably not even a guess, but its always useful to have some strawman figures.

Type / Date	2009	2015	2020	2050	2100	2150	2200
Naturals	99%	95%	90%	80%	50%	30%	10%
Enhanced	1%	5%	10%	20%	50%	70%	90%
Multiples	0	100s	10k+	100k+	10m+	1bn	2bn
Digitals	0	10s	50s+	100s+	10k+	1m++	100m++
Gleisners	0	1s	10s+	10s+	1k+	100k++	1m++

Figures for naturals and Enhanced are % biological human population. + means +/- 1 order of magnitude, ++ means +/- 2 orders of magnitude

And if you doubt the 2015 figures I fully expect Daden to be running at least 1 Multiple (probably me!), 1 Digital (an enhanced Halo) and even a Gleisner (Halo in some 2015 equivalent of a Femsapien).

But the real message is that we can already create Multiples and Digitals, and even Gleisners - they just aren't very good yet! But it means there has been a shift. This is no longer a question of when or if or can, but just one of how good, and how fast will we improve.

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OSD09-H03: Virtual Dialogue Application for Families of Deployed Service Members

Virtual Dialogue Application for Families of Deployed Service Members OSD09-H03

Interesting DoD RFP for a chatbot for absent serviceman's families. Too late for us to respond directly (and the project overall is probably a bit too big for us and US based). but would sure be something interesting to contibute to and I'm sure our AAML/ASML, extended AIML and SL technology would play in nicely.

Question remains though - do you have to pass the Turing Test as part of the project?

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Just posted a new video of our Halo robotar in SL

I've just posted a new video to the Daden YouTube channel showing our Halo automated avatar being put through her paces. This is a recording of the demo we gave at the BCS AI Special Interest Group conference in December, and includes a demo of the emotion work we have been doing with the University of Wolverhampton.

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Will the Moon and Mars be Virtual Worlds' Coronation?

In the UK it was the Queen's Coronation in 1953 that drove TV's into the mass market, as people bought sets purely to witness the historic event. Perhaps virtual worlds will become de riguer when man returns to the moon, or first lands on Mars.

ln 1969 I was 8 years old. I remember sitting on the floor of our school corridor with the rest of my school watching the grainy black and white images of the first moon landing. At the time TV technology was over 50 years old.

In 10 years time humans might return to the Moon, and in 20 years we might land on Mars. Are we really going to experience this event primarily through a technology which by then will be 100 years old?

The most interesting alternative (well beyond the simple re-packaging of a headcam feed to a wrap-around headset display) are virtual worlds.

When that astronaut (or taikonaut) steps out onto the Moon I (and you) could already be standing on the surface waiting for them.

NASA are already out to tender for their own virtual world. But this won't just be one world, but also a virtual Moon, a virtual Mars. As we collect more and more data about these worlds their virtual analogs will become ever more accurate. Scientists will gather in them to plan missions, analyse data, and decide on the next move or dig of a robot explorer.

But when the landings come these worlds will be crowded. The mission specialists will have their private world, the rest of us will have our own public instances, as crowded or as private as we like. Some might immerse us, forcing us to wear spacesuits and move in reduced gravity, others let us party around the virtual BBQ.

Using video or other motion capture analysis the movement of the astronaut will drive the million copies of their avatar. We'll watch from wherever we want to stand, we'll hear the words as they are spoken, and watch their actions as they do them.

For some this may seem less real than video. But both are just streams of data - and digital video (particularly with emerging object based standards such as MPEG7) has no monopoly on, or even claim to, truth. And in the virtual world you will be immersed, not just viewing but part of the action, it becomes subjective not objective.

Of course Mars offers an additional challenge - lag. The Moon is only 1.2 light seconds away. Mars is 200 - 300 light seconds away. As a one way experience that will be fine, but it disrupts the two-way experience - particularly important for the astronauts, their controllers and scientists, and perhaps even their families. The solution to this may be the flip situation - we virtualise ourselves as an AI based personality construct and run ourselves in the virtual Mars on the astronauts servers on Mars.

So perhaps my grandchildren will remember the return to the Moon or the first Mars landing not as something they saw on a screen sat on a cold wood floor, but as something they experienced unfolding around them.

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Bloggingheads.tv - diavlogs - Jaron Lanier on AI

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/15555

Neat concept - one on one interview by webcam. This one is Jaron Lanier
Microsoft Corp., University of California-Berkeley, Jaronlanier.com and Eliezer Yudkowsky
Singularity Institute, Overcoming Bias.

Thanks @mendicott for the heads-up

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The Loebner Prize from a judge's perspective

Interesting view of the Loebner/Turing from a judge this year. His approach is very much to find out if the bot is a human or not, rather than to see if he can have a "normal" conversation. Again this pushes me to the belief that we shoudl have a tiered approach to this:

- test where testers don't know there are any bots
- test where the testers know there are bots but have "normal" conversations
- full gloves-off test

His questions were very much reasoning tests of the third kind:

- if we shake hands, whose hand am I holding?
- I have a jewellery box in my hand, how many CDs can I store in it?
- he four capitals of the UK are three, Manchester and Liverpool. What's wrong with this sentence?

How many times do you ask those in normal conversation?

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Spending the weekend looking at fuzzy logic

http://www.ddj.com/architect/184416017?pgno=1

Be interesting to see how we can build this into the AI emotion engine - and probably useful for the motivation engine too.

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Rise of the rat-brained robots - tech - 13 August 2008 - New Scientist Tech

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/mg19926696.100-rise-of-the-ratbrained-robots.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19926696.100

I can remember speaking to Prof Warwick about this and some other interesting applications of the "technology"about 9 months ago - interesting to see it now maturing.

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OpenCalais

http://www.opencalais.com/

"The Calais Web Service automatically creates rich semantic metadata forthe content you submit - in well under a second. Using natural languageprocessing, machine learning and other methods, Calais analyzes yourdocument and finds the entities within it. But, Calais goes well beyondclassic entity identification and returns the facts and events hiddenwithin your text as well."

And it's from Thomson Reuters!

Now couldn't a bot have fun with that!

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SL Bot Day - better movement, plus IM and Friend handling

Spent the day working on our ChatbotIF interface to Second Life for a change. This sits between our Discourse chatbot engine and libsecondlife. Worked my way through a list of things we'd flagged up over the past few weeks. Improvements/new features include:

- better point to point movement by estimating travel time for each segment
- full IM handling, including routing IM via Discourse and setting the bot to decline IMs
- full friend handling, including setting the bot to decline Friend requests
- a "fidget" function when idle to play random  animations and movements
- ability to set whether to ignore or listen to objects on channel 0
- ability to control movement from Discourse so the bot can more easily show people around
- accept teleport lure's form owner

Always more to do though!

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Human - Machine Convergence

Just loved this diagram in the IET's Engineering magasine - I think accompanying a future-gazing article by Ian Pearson at BT.

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Artificial General Intelligence

Artificial General Intelligence - Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics) Journals, Books & Online Media | Springer

Not a bad looking book from the contents. Even got a chapter by Pei Wang on NARS. Might pick it up - after waiting to see what comment is like on Robitron.

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Stigmergic Systems

The home of stigmergic systems

Might be something interesting here.

"It is a very clever strategy used by nature to get colonies of insects to self-organize, tell each other where to find food, create sophisticated messaging systems and build complex architectural structures."

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The $20,000 Question: An Essay by Extropia DaSilva

Gwyn%u2019s Home » The $20,000 Question: An Essay by Extropia DaSilva

"We think a lot about the nature of the brain, and whether computational substrates can be dense enough to enable thinking within them. I know exactly how that's going down, I think SL is dreaming. It could be looked at as one collective dream." - Philip Rosedale

Cracking essay by Extropia DaSilva on AI in SL

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