BOFFINS working at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have built an AI program which creates a walking talking four year old Second Life character.

Eddie acts like a four-year-old child let lose in Second Life and thus fits in well with the other denizens there who find his antics similar to their own.

He can apparently reason about his own beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age or adults in Second Life.

Selmer Bringsjord, head of Rensselaer’s Cognitive Science Department and leader of the research project said that unlike current avatars in massively multiplayer online worlds, Eddie is not tethered to a user’s keystrokes and only gives the illusion of mentality.

He is able to possess memories, believe things, want things and remember.

Currently Eddie requires the processing power of a supercomputer and can only be engineered using logic-based artificial intelligence and computational cognitive modeling techniques.

You can see Eddie in action here µ

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