Feb 2018 v01 online
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Another example of the uncanny valley in<br />
modern video games can be found in the ‘AI<br />
baby’ developed by a company called Soul<br />
Machines. This company uses artificial<br />
intelligence in a desktop application to create<br />
lifelike avatars with which humans can play and<br />
interact. Unfortunately, the incredible realism<br />
of the “babies” is what makes them all the more<br />
disturbing; the closer to real it gets, the worse it<br />
is. Which begs the question; why put in all that<br />
effort, time, and most certainly money, if it's<br />
going to look more disturbing rather than less?<br />
From all the examples <strong>online</strong>, you will find that<br />
anything responsive is usually either heavily<br />
animated or slightly disturbing. Neither add to<br />
the immersion of the experience.<br />
To this day, I have come across one notable<br />
exception, which I would definitely recommend<br />
exploring should you be interested in the idea<br />
of interactions in virtual reality.<br />
Unexpectedly, the one VR application that I<br />
found the most impressive NPC responses in,<br />
was a game that didn’t really show any<br />
characters at all. The Accountant was created by<br />
the writers of adult cartoon Rick and Morty (of<br />
all people), and is a game where the main<br />
characters talk to the player over intercom.<br />
While it isn’t responsive to the player’s voice, it<br />
takes its cues from player behaviour. It perfectly<br />
tackles the current restrictions of NPC<br />
developed in VR and does it hilariously. The<br />
designers were able to perfectly predict player<br />
motivations and actions, not just regarding<br />
those not used to playing on VR, but going so<br />
far as to effectively predict and affect the actions<br />
of VR developers who work on these games<br />
every day. The part that most piques the interest<br />
of my realism obsession was one particular<br />
scene; I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but<br />
what I will say is that I’ve never before felt like I<br />
was going to hurt a real, living entity like I did<br />
in this game. In making me feel as if these were<br />
real people who were speaking to me, the game<br />
was able to create a shocking level of immersion<br />
unlike anything I’ve experienced before.<br />
What we need to ask ourselves now is what’s<br />
going to happen when we do eventually have<br />
realistic humans in virtual reality. The scary part<br />
is that myself and many other developers can<br />
see how it could be achieved – the only missing<br />
factor is sufficient time and resources. But if<br />
environments can affect people in the ways that<br />
we’ve seen so far – being implemented in<br />
hospitals, raising and lowering anxiety, affecting<br />
people's memory and motor skills – then you<br />
can only imagine the amount of impact that an<br />
AI that looks, acts and feels almost<br />
indistinguishable from a genuine human could<br />
have on its audience. This could potentially<br />
spark up issues involving censorship, mental<br />
manipulation, addiction to interaction, abuse<br />
cases, or even trauma. Arguments that ‘video<br />
games are too violent’ could have a major leg to<br />
stand on. There’s a case to be made that the<br />
only reason VR is surviving as a ‘mainstream’<br />
and ‘safe’ platform, is because realistic ‘AI’ or<br />
‘NPC’ do not exist on the same level of<br />
immersion as the objects and environment do.<br />
I personally think that it has a very long way to<br />
go, but if you want to keep an eye on the<br />
journey we’re about to take into this<br />
unprecedented future of interaction in virtual<br />
reality, <strong>online</strong> search keyword .
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