What If Video Game A.i. Became Sentient?

[rob86 2]

There is a lot of controversy regarding what's acceptable to mass-murder in video games and what's not. Almost anyone who's played a lot of video games has most likely massacred thousands of humanoid artificial lives, whether you're decapitating Nazis, running down pedestrians, or blowing up soldiers by the hundreds on a RTS battlefield.

 

Even though Artificial Intelligence in video games is very limited right now, some people still have a problem with killing characters on a screen. Check out what a lot of people think concerning the controversial level in Modern Warfare where you're a terrorist killing unarmed civilians with a machine gun. These aren't even close to being real sentient creatures, yet some people won't even play this level because you're killing innocents instead of 'bad guys'.

 

Artificial Intelligent is always improving, but has a long ways to go before it becomes like we see if Sci Fi. Game designers are always trying to make the best game possible, always trying to improve upon the competition, and it would not surprise me at all if some day in the future they incorporated extremely advanced AI into games. Sentient creatures who are capable of thought and have the desire to preserve their lives. Artificial people who truly believe that they are alive, with families who care about them. They don't actually have families, but they would believe they do, to give them a realistic reason for survival. Wouldn't that make a game challenging and authentic if the people you were trying to kill were truly alive, and unpredictable, even if only inside a Save Game file on a computer?

 

Would this be going too far? Would these artificial people be alive enough to qualify for mercy, or are they still just objects to be blown apart in a gory mess in a video game? What do you think?

Edited September 23, 2010 by rob86 (see edit history)

[mahesh2k 0]

Would this be going too far? Would these artificial people be alive enough to qualify for mercy, or are they still just objects to be blown apart in a gory mess in a video game? What do you think?

I'll wait for human right declaration to update it's article for the artifical life as well. I mean we need to understand about the feeling encoded into them I dont think of it as a mess or anything. Look at the evolution of gaming, many kids are really understanding the difference between the gaming world and reality. I don't think of it as gory mess that way. Too much policing for video games AI is not worth it. Why we're spending too much time even before the capability of AI for individual thinking ? It's way too long for AI to cry for pain or gore violence. LOL. that's how i see things.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I think games may already be going a little too far. Some people (myself included) have (or at least had) a hard time believing games can affect behavior of people, but as of recently I've been seeing it more and more with siblings and friends. During and after playing a game that deals with a lot of violence (Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, whatever) they always get "set off" a lot easier/faster than normal and end up resorting to violence much faster in many situations. Without the games everything is a lot calmer.As for myself, I don't deal with that. I fully comprehend the difference between reality and games, and to me a game is a game. Whether I lose 50 times or win every time is irrelevant to me -- I play to pass time and as long as time is going by it is serving its purpose.But for a lot of people (dare I say a majority, based on watching players online?) that differentiation just doesn't happen.As to whether or not it causes people to kill in real life, I don't know. But I know for a fact a lot of people get madder/more aggressive after playing them.

[OsamaBinSteve 0]

I don't think that games cause violence. I always play games, but I don't want to go out and kill anyone. One of my favorite games is Left 4 Dead 2, I play it all the time, yet, I'm not going out and hitting people with guitars like in the game. People the commit crimes because they saw it in a video game are already violent people. You never see a very nice, perfect child play a game and say, "I think I'm gonna go kill someone now."You just have to remember that we are all different and all think in different ways.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I don't think that games cause violence. I always play games, but I don't want to go out and kill anyone. One of my favorite games is Left 4 Dead 2, I play it all the time, yet, I'm not going out and hitting people with guitars like in the game. People the commit crimes because they saw it in a video game are already violent people. You never see a very nice, perfect child play a game and say, "I think I'm gonna go kill someone now."You just have to remember that we are all different and all think in different ways.

Re-read the post just above yours. Not *everyone* is affected, but a lot are. You making your basis solely on yourself and a "perfect kid" is like me claiming nobody has vision impairment and needs glasses because myself and my 4 friends all have perfect vision. You can't make a judgement without having a much larger pool of people.

[OsamaBinSteve 0]

Re-read the post just above yours. Not *everyone* is affected, but a lot are. You making your basis solely on yourself and a "perfect kid" is like me claiming nobody has vision impairment and needs glasses because myself and my 4 friends all have perfect vision. You can't make a judgement without having a much larger pool of people.

I apologize, I do need a larger pool of people before I jump to conclusions. I did some research, and studies of children exposed to violence have shown that they can become “immune” or numb to the horror of violence, imitate the violence they see, and show more aggressive behavior with greater exposure to violence. Some children accept violence as a way to handle problems. Studies have also shown that the more realistic and repeated the exposure to violence, the greater the impact on children. In addition, children with emotional, behavioral and learning problems may be more influenced by violent images. Another thing that studies show is that after playing a violent video game, a child can be more aggressive for up to 24 hours.
After doing the research I have come to this conclusion, video games do in fact make children more aggressive. But that raises a question. Why do video games make children so aggressive. Why not movies, books, and even the news? All of those things can be violent. Why video games above everything else? Is it because you control the character? Someone help me come to light on this subject.
Edited September 28, 2010 by OsamaBinSteve (see edit history)

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I apologize, I do need a larger pool of people before I jump to conclusions. I did some research, and studies of children exposed to violence have shown that they can become “immune” or numb to the horror of violence, imitate the violence they see, and show more aggressive behavior with greater exposure to violence. Some children accept violence as a way to handle problems. Studies have also shown that the more realistic and repeated the exposure to violence, the greater the impact on children. In addition, children with emotional, behavioral and learning problems may be more influenced by violent images. Another thing that studies show is that after playing a violent video game, a child can be more aggressive for up to 24 hours. After doing the research I have come to this conclusion, video games do in fact make children more aggressive. But that raises a question. Why do video games make children so aggressive. Why not movies, books, and even the news? All of those things can be violent. Why video games above everything else? Is it because you control the character? Someone help me come to light on this subject.

Movies and the news do as well. This is why on the news they are not allowed to post gruesome pictures. On movies it is the parents' job to keep children away from those types (which is why there are ratings).

Books do not have the effect because most people are visual. We learn faster and remember better what we see, not read. Not to mention when you see it you can see it (whereas by reading you are only making things up in your mind).

More or less what's actually happening is called "desensitization." The more you see something the more used to it you are, and this causes you to care less about it in the future. For example, if your parents were fighting on a daily basis for years while you lived at home, and then they fight again, you wouldn't be affected as bad (if at all) as if they had never fought before and all of a sudden were.

Or, in the medical field, a lot of us are bothered by dismemberment, blood gushing out, etc. As a result, we are recommended to spend a couple months in a hospital emergency room, as we will see it enough that it will no longer bother us.


Hopefully this helps you better understand what's going on in the mind. If there are any more questions feel free to ask! I know a lot about the subject.



Edit : Didn't see your question about games. In games you are the person, so yes it does cause an increase in anger and everything. It also embeds itself in your brain better as it is interactive (whereas a movie isn't).
Edited September 28, 2010 by rpgsearcherz (see edit history)

[sheepdog 10]

No matter how far computers advance, and how intelligent they become, and how realistic the charectors are, they are NOT alive. Not real. A computer charector cannot become completely sentient. They can be programed to think I suppose, but without that input from the programer they are just a bunch of circuts and eletric impulses. The violence children are exposed to is a whole different subject. I am still not sure on where I stand on the subject. For you young'uns, this debate has been going on for a very long time. At least since the invention of the television. Maybe the very first cartoon where the sheepdog bopped the coyote on the head with a big hammer, there have been those that cry that are children are being taught violence. I think I lean towards TV/games not being such a bad thing if the child is taught good family values, right from wrong and has good, solid parents who take an agressive interest in the proper raising of the child. Which unfortunatly in not the case much of the time.

[Okara KAmi 0]

--- Regarding the effect of violent games/movies on ChildrenI think the effect that violent video games have on children is an organic one, and not something that we hold the responsibility to control. By that logic, we should limit over exposure of anything and everything, because it will make the child numb to it. It's up to the parents to adapt their parenting to the morphing world. I played a lot of violent games, but never lost track of the fact that it was just a game. The line between what is allowed in a game and what is allowed in real life was never blurred either. This came down, I believe, to my own internally embedded moral code.If i have a weak sense of morality, then it becomes harder for me to know where the rules of a game ends and where the rules of real life starts. And while this is a dangerously generic categorization of the reason why kids become affected by video games, I do believe the responsibility lies in their up bringing.Limiting how violent video games are is intrinsically an anti-American view. We should have the right to produce whatever we want. If the consumer wants it, he can buy it. If the parent thinks that their child is not ready for such a violent game, then they should not buy it. The choice should rest, always, at the grass-roots, and should not be regulated by the government. Why? Because no matter how you view this topic, it is bound to be an opinion, and opinions should never be made into laws.--- Regarding Sentient LifeAs a Computer Science, I would like to state that self-awareness isn't completely out of the question. The big stone wall between AI now and sentient behavior is active learning and opinion generation. That is to say, we haven't fully been able to make an AI understand new concepts and generate a "view" on it. It's easy to parse through a lot of data, say on the internet, and regurgitate relevant information about key word(s). But it's difficult to 'talk' about the subject.Once we are able to overcome this barrier, it becomes easier to create self-aware AI that 'feels' about new information. This feeling about new information can be translated to having "senses", immediately making it a sentient AI.This is a long way from now, as currently I can't even 'think' of a way to dynamically generate emotion about new subjects in code. But when that becomes possible, I don't think killing AI's inside of a game will be our biggest problem. Imagine a race of robots with infinitely more computing power than our brains, that begin to understand that they're the superior race. xD