Why Blizzard and Zuckerberg Are Wrong

or, The Persistent Case for Social Scientists

There are some lessons people in online businesses persistently don’t learn.  A lot of these are grouped into the area of “social concerns are just as real as technical ones” or “social issues do not have technical solutions.”

Recently a couple of major players in the online space have shown a stunning lack of regard for social concerns in ways that have long-term effects and that can safely be filed under “Lessons Learned.”

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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.