
Dungeons and Dragons, not chess and Go: why AI needs roleplay - jonbaer
https://aeon.co/ideas/dungeons-and-dragons-not-chess-and-go-why-ai-needs-roleplay
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ggggtez
>Instead of the Turing test, perhaps we need an elf ranger test?

No. The author is trying to be funny, but the Turing test already encompasses
this. The rest of the article is meandering.

Edit: And the whole intro of "These computer scientists play chess and go, so
they wrote bots to do it. They should instead write a bot that plays the game
I like instead, then it would be 'real' AI". Come on. The hypocrisy is
palpable.

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mcv
I disagree. Playing a vague, open-ended collaborative game like D&D is a far
more complex challenge for AI than something as bounded and calculable as
chess or go. Computers are great at rapid calculation, but to be intelligent
in a human sense, you need to be able to deal with vague associations and
unclear boundaries.

You see similar problems with self-driving cars. They may know the rules, the
physics and the street signs, but they apparently still have trouble deciding
whether a shadow is an object or not, whether a plastic bag blowing across the
street is something you can ignore or not, that a ball rolling onto the street
can mean that a child will soon run after it, etc.

We can think outside the box, AI can't. Not yet, at least.

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ggggtez
The Turing test is not "chess or go". It's the ability to converse with a
human about anything, including art, poetry, and yes, that almost certainly
includes D&D. Unless you think D&D is easier than discussing poetry, then your
point is moot.

I'd argue that if you want to solve the ability to tell a story, D&D is a
terrible stepping stone. The arguments in this article are weak (You need to
play in person, and physically roll the dice? ReallY?). No serious scientist
thinks that's necessary.

~~~
mcv
I took the comment about the Turing test as a joke. I doubt anyone would think
it's about chess or go. Yes, being able to pass the Turing test would include
being able to play D&D and participate in many other social activities.

But D&D doesn't have to be at the bottom of the list of things to focus on to
pass the Turing test. In fact, I don't consider passing the Turing test all
that interesting as a goal. But being able to deal with complex, open-ended,
social situations, would be an interesting goal for AI.

AI does very well in limited situations, when there's a clear box to think
inside of. But there are many situations, including self-driving cars, or
playing a game like D&D, where there's no real limit to the things that are
relevant to the activity.

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sevensor
By these criteria, Dwarf Fortress embodies the greatest AI ever developed.

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tjwds
Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1002/](https://xkcd.com/1002/)

Computer Arimaa and Go have since surpassed top humans, but I suppose D&D
could be on the same level as Calvinball.

~~~
ggggtez
Tests like "Plays D&D" are bad, because you don't need to advance the tech to
create convincing fakes. Just like how people wrote a chat bot that was
written to "act" like an 8 year old, so if it ever got a question it wasn't
programmed to know how to answer, it could just change the subject or
otherwise act "childlike" as it's failure state. This was convincing to humans
who were not expecting the deceit (from the programmers), but did not mean
that the chatbot was more advanced in it's AI than other bots.

You can preprogram a chat bot to pretend to be a stoic monk who says very
little, and could probably convince some folks that it was a real human
playing the game as long as it took it's turn as expected, and rolled dice
when asked.

