Simulated Intelligence

Let me first get some naming right. I will call the area that I intend to focus on “Simulated Intelligence” instead of “Artificial Intelligence.” I do this because what I will do here is not the real hard science that tries to build machines that really act like humans do, that have properties that qualify as real intelligence. I’m not trying to write software that could pass the Turing Test, I’m not even going into that broad direction. My idea is to create software (more specifically software components, vertical prototypes or whatever) which is a sufficient simulation of intelligence to create a good gaming experience.

In order to create a real AI, I would have to delve into Cognitive Science, trying to figure out who a mind works. I have not even the slightest clue how to do that, nor do I have the capabilities (for example access to medical equipment to “look” into someone’s brain, or the ability to make extensive surveys to do black box probing of the brain and extract interesting fact using statistical analysis). Instead I just pick up the research results of some real scientists, bend and abuse them and see if I can make some interesting use of them. You might want to call it “Applied Cognitive Science,” but I think that’s already more credit than it deserves.

So what exactly am I trying to achieve? Read the rest of this entry »