This Isn’t the Social AI You’re Looking For

I’m a huge proponent of what I call “social AI;” I’ve written and spoken about this before.  Social AI is in some ways a subset of“Artificial General Intelligence” in that it implies AI that acts in socially plausible ways (a phrase we use to avoid problematic terms like “realistic”) without having to include the complete range of human knowledge and nuance.

My vision for social AI is that it enables computer-driven agents (aka NPCs) to interact with each other and with human participants in socially plausible and satisfying ways.  This, I believe, is necessary for the “very long form story” and non-static worlds that I wrote about earlier, among other uses.

But there are also disturbing examples of what social AI isn’t, at least to my way of thinking.  I’m going to look at a few of these, and then come back to talk more about what social AI can do for us in more positive ways.

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The Future of AI: Social AI

I’ve been talking a lot about “social AI” recently as a way to differentiate what we have been developing from “typical” or traditional AI.

The easy way to say this is “we don’t do pathfinding.”  Which isn’t entirely true (we have a simple but effective pathfinding mechanism), but it shows where our focus is(n’t).  Agents need to move around a world, sure; and showing crowds of agents walking purposefully about makes for a great visual demo.  But to be interesting — or even more, meaningful — they need to do a lot more than that.