Assignment: to make an interactive body.

The interactive body I made for class (in collaboration with Jason King) was a flash animation as a representation of an idea. The idea was about attributing to artificial intelligence a feature which is often neglected or not fully considered when discussing their possibility. Most of the time, the argument that intelligent machines will eventually come to exists is that we will no doubt in future be able to imbue in a machine, faculties of response equal or greater to those of human beings. But our argument is that a machine which can sense it's surroundings and respond in similar fashions to human beings would really only ever be a simulation of intelligence. Being a thinking being doesn't just involve interpretation of information, but also the seeking out of information. Recognizing a lack of knowledge, and seeking that missing knowledge out is essential to being cognizant. How would curiosity be created in a machine? How can one code a program so that it will seek out any kind of knowledge which it does not already have.

So the character in out flash animation is such a being. A virtual being who exists in a computer, and who is seeking out other sentient life. She hasn't realized that she is the result of human creation, and is in fact unaware of humans at all. All she knows is the digital world of her computer, and those to which it is networked to. Of course, since human beings interact with computers daily, she has become suspicious of "alien" life, and is now actively trying to discover it.

Another question that arose while making the project was when is something considered artificial intelligence? It seems in most discussion that human human beings will create a system knowing that it will be "AI". That artificial intelligences will be so when someone decides that they fit the mold. But a being is truely intelligent without such a limitation. A being is intelligent because it is, not because a second party has defined it as such. So this simulation is also about a character who is intelligent, without the benifit of a second party definition. Perhaps this character was a happy, unexpected coincidence of routine coding. Humans may not have knowingly created her, just as they may not knowingly create AI in the future.