Artificial Intelligence, NPCs and Emotion Machines

This talk looks at psychology and AI. In the first half of the session we look at player psychology and examine how mirror neurons (which we all have) cause us to identify with characters, and why. We look at Jungian archetypes and their important role in games and our emotional responses. We then consider a system for an "Emotional User Interface" which will allow a game to keep track of how a player is emotionally responding, thereby increasing storytelling capacities. In the second half of the session we look at how characters can be harnessed with EUIs so that an NPC can be what it was meant to be; a narrative vessel. This examination looks at the emotional, social, intellectual, and physical characteristics of NPCs and discusses why it is important that we throw out traditional A.I. approaches and work towards designing true digital humans with today's technology. We close the session with a few questions, such as, "What happens when we begin falling in love with our robots?" and "What is the emotional equivalent of a Turing Test?" Operational examples will be provided.

Organizer

Mark Meadows

Symposium

Following this workshop there is a talk on Artificial Intelligence, NPCs and Emotion Machines