Videogames or other realities?
Location: Rome
Date: 21st August 2017.
It's the 10th birthday of my son, and I'm heading to Gamestop store to buy him an XBox hit. Today
it is hard today to find a console game where guns and cannons are not included in the box. To be
honest, I seriously doubt that it was a good idea to buy that stuff for a child. Nevertheless, in the
end, I found one appealing adventure on the shelf named "Far Cry Primal." “Might be instructive
too” was my lame justification.
The truth is that I was dead curious to see how a virtual reality, which takes place in 10000 BC,
would look like. Just a few minutes of play, and any doubt disappears of its own accord. The level
of realism of the game and the textures detail is unbelievable for my eyes, still adjusted to 8-bit
characters. It makes me feel I’m really wandering in the woods, thousands of years ago.
Today’s video games are not just more realistic than those played by us gamers of the 80s, they are
a different thing. I dare say they are serious games if you pass me the contradiction.
The good old 8-bit world had no precise canvas in the structure of a video game. It might range
from a 2D Galaxy ride to an obstacle course made of stairs, walking fires and a mean gorilla
throwing barrels at your head. Without a well-defined framework, video game creators could
indulge with the most amusing ideas. One of my favorites, in that meaning, was “Crazy Climber,” a
game that appeared in the late 80s. Stepping in the shoes of a reckless climber, you were to reach
the top of a skyscraper, watching out for the unfriendly tenants who nastily dropped everything on
you: flower pots, buckets of water, and even a piano!
Unlike these simple amenities, today's games are designed with a precise framework: you are
placed in a three-dimensional virtual reality playing as first-person, just as if you were cast into the
game. Most demanding players can enjoy some visual devices known as "reality sets" to isolate you
even more from the surroundings. Just wear them, and you will be entering the playground of a
World War II battle or an ancient cave, where a saber-toothed tiger is waiting for you.Now imagine looking into the eyes of a video game character, feeling his heart beating faster as you
point a gun at him. Or maybe his gratitude because you just saved his life. What is missing in
current technology to make virtual reality not distinguishable from real life?
I like to say we are just three steps away from it. If you ever played the latest football game on your
console, well curled up on the sofa, you would certainly agree that is awfully similar to a real
football game going on TV. Now forget the sofa and step back three steps. Look again at the screen.
I can tell you for sure you will not be able to distinguish if it’s a real match on TV or a video game
on the console. Nonetheless, you will need to borrow the shoes from Jack and the Beanstalk's giant
to make these three steps as that gap is called "human consciousness." To make your digital
character love or hate you need to be able to replicate the human awareness into a machine. Will we
ever find a way do that? The consciousness of one's being has always been the boundary between
the man and the rest of creation ever since ancient times.
All humans perceive emotions, albeit differently: to find ourselves on a beautiful tropical island at
this time would be tremendous for most of us, yet not a big deal if you are living there. We can
therefore positively assert that human emotions are peculiar to each individual, in response to
external perceptions. Next question is: will we be ever able to manufacture machines that can feel
emotions? We cannot give a definitive answer to this question, at least without a good mix of
science and philosophy.
Science takes the floor first: as we know from the study of the human brain, emotions are located in
a particular area called the limbic system: with the emergence of specific stimuli, they trigger an
instinctive and general reaction of "alert" accompanied by bodily variations. Emotions and
associated reactions are immediately processed by the neocortex, which recognizes them for what
they are (fear, surprise, rage) thus selecting the response to be taken. Even though our brain is a
very complicated machine, it is fundamentally made of neurons which communicate by sending
signals and producing chemical reactions in our body, resulting in joy, fear, sadness, or anger.
In this respect, emotions are not out of "programmable" logic, yet a shift of paradigm is required to
produce an artificial thought. Chiefly, instead of merely teaching to a machine how to perform a
repetitive task, we might teach it how to perceive the world outside. Such a machine could react to
signals from the world, encoding these impulses with signals that finally produce sensations of joy,
fear or anger. Does it sound like a science fiction story?
At present, massive investments are going on in the Artificial Intelligence, and the leading
engineering research institutes are working on simulators that can express both narrative intellect
and well-behaved, emotional intellect. This means enabling a machine to autonomously complete
some tasks as well as establishing social relationships with other individuals or machines.
Would this also imply self-awareness? Hard to say it, but let's see things from the philosophical
angle too. Demonstrating that another individual has awareness of himself is equally catchy because
it is based only on our own perception.We are surrounded by lots of busy people caring for their never-ending pile of work or trying to keep up with socials at the zebra crossing. They do react to our actions but are they really aware of themselves?
Remember that we experience the world through our senses. When you sense a person, then your
mind tells you that he or she exists. But your brain could be forging the people, just as it might be
forging the chair you are sitting on. Indeed, there is a philosophical doctrine called “solipsism” that
affirms precisely this: the only certainty is one's own existence. However hard you will dig into this
paradox, you will realize that it’s both irrefutable and indefensible at the same time. Thus, from the
logical point of view, if we cannot be 100% sure that human beings surrounding us are real then
how can we be 100% sure that a machine saying: “Hello, I’m Eliza” is not real?
Date: 21st August 2017.
It's the 10th birthday of my son, and I'm heading to Gamestop store to buy him an XBox hit. Today
it is hard today to find a console game where guns and cannons are not included in the box. To be
honest, I seriously doubt that it was a good idea to buy that stuff for a child. Nevertheless, in the
end, I found one appealing adventure on the shelf named "Far Cry Primal." “Might be instructive
too” was my lame justification.
The truth is that I was dead curious to see how a virtual reality, which takes place in 10000 BC,
would look like. Just a few minutes of play, and any doubt disappears of its own accord. The level
of realism of the game and the textures detail is unbelievable for my eyes, still adjusted to 8-bit
characters. It makes me feel I’m really wandering in the woods, thousands of years ago.
Today’s video games are not just more realistic than those played by us gamers of the 80s, they are
a different thing. I dare say they are serious games if you pass me the contradiction.
The good old 8-bit world had no precise canvas in the structure of a video game. It might range
from a 2D Galaxy ride to an obstacle course made of stairs, walking fires and a mean gorilla
throwing barrels at your head. Without a well-defined framework, video game creators could
indulge with the most amusing ideas. One of my favorites, in that meaning, was “Crazy Climber,” a
game that appeared in the late 80s. Stepping in the shoes of a reckless climber, you were to reach
the top of a skyscraper, watching out for the unfriendly tenants who nastily dropped everything on
you: flower pots, buckets of water, and even a piano!
Unlike these simple amenities, today's games are designed with a precise framework: you are
placed in a three-dimensional virtual reality playing as first-person, just as if you were cast into the
game. Most demanding players can enjoy some visual devices known as "reality sets" to isolate you
even more from the surroundings. Just wear them, and you will be entering the playground of a
World War II battle or an ancient cave, where a saber-toothed tiger is waiting for you.Now imagine looking into the eyes of a video game character, feeling his heart beating faster as you
point a gun at him. Or maybe his gratitude because you just saved his life. What is missing in
current technology to make virtual reality not distinguishable from real life?
I like to say we are just three steps away from it. If you ever played the latest football game on your
console, well curled up on the sofa, you would certainly agree that is awfully similar to a real
football game going on TV. Now forget the sofa and step back three steps. Look again at the screen.
I can tell you for sure you will not be able to distinguish if it’s a real match on TV or a video game
on the console. Nonetheless, you will need to borrow the shoes from Jack and the Beanstalk's giant
to make these three steps as that gap is called "human consciousness." To make your digital
character love or hate you need to be able to replicate the human awareness into a machine. Will we
ever find a way do that? The consciousness of one's being has always been the boundary between
the man and the rest of creation ever since ancient times.
All humans perceive emotions, albeit differently: to find ourselves on a beautiful tropical island at
this time would be tremendous for most of us, yet not a big deal if you are living there. We can
therefore positively assert that human emotions are peculiar to each individual, in response to
external perceptions. Next question is: will we be ever able to manufacture machines that can feel
emotions? We cannot give a definitive answer to this question, at least without a good mix of
science and philosophy.
Science takes the floor first: as we know from the study of the human brain, emotions are located in
a particular area called the limbic system: with the emergence of specific stimuli, they trigger an
instinctive and general reaction of "alert" accompanied by bodily variations. Emotions and
associated reactions are immediately processed by the neocortex, which recognizes them for what
they are (fear, surprise, rage) thus selecting the response to be taken. Even though our brain is a
very complicated machine, it is fundamentally made of neurons which communicate by sending
signals and producing chemical reactions in our body, resulting in joy, fear, sadness, or anger.
In this respect, emotions are not out of "programmable" logic, yet a shift of paradigm is required to
produce an artificial thought. Chiefly, instead of merely teaching to a machine how to perform a
repetitive task, we might teach it how to perceive the world outside. Such a machine could react to
signals from the world, encoding these impulses with signals that finally produce sensations of joy,
fear or anger. Does it sound like a science fiction story?
At present, massive investments are going on in the Artificial Intelligence, and the leading
engineering research institutes are working on simulators that can express both narrative intellect
and well-behaved, emotional intellect. This means enabling a machine to autonomously complete
some tasks as well as establishing social relationships with other individuals or machines.
Would this also imply self-awareness? Hard to say it, but let's see things from the philosophical
angle too. Demonstrating that another individual has awareness of himself is equally catchy because
it is based only on our own perception.We are surrounded by lots of busy people caring for their never-ending pile of work or trying to keep up with socials at the zebra crossing. They do react to our actions but are they really aware of themselves?
Remember that we experience the world through our senses. When you sense a person, then your
mind tells you that he or she exists. But your brain could be forging the people, just as it might be
forging the chair you are sitting on. Indeed, there is a philosophical doctrine called “solipsism” that
affirms precisely this: the only certainty is one's own existence. However hard you will dig into this
paradox, you will realize that it’s both irrefutable and indefensible at the same time. Thus, from the
logical point of view, if we cannot be 100% sure that human beings surrounding us are real then
how can we be 100% sure that a machine saying: “Hello, I’m Eliza” is not real?
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