A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

So I started seeing an analyst a couple weeks ago. That’s good news.

Now, in two 50 minute sessions only so much can happen.

BUT one of the solid effects of having taken definitive steps to right myself (yeah yeah I know “oh, as if you weren’t right enough already” ;) is that on the back burners of my mind, I’ve been playing the recapitulation game with myself. I’ve been looking at notebooks 1/4 full of project ideas, things I wanted to noodle around with, ideas I’ve had from brainstorms to mild humidity. In evaluating which of those I want to turn my attention (albeit fractured) on I keep coming back to the idea of making something smart.

Most people, when they hear “AI” think of two things now (fortunately.) They think of the “indistinguishable from human” goal, and they think of some nebulous promises of software from 10 to 20 years ago. Used to be it was just the terminator that came to mind. Hell, I call it progress.

But what’s important about the progress towards the first type of AI is the APPEARANCE of intelligence. There are hosts of ways, usually involving some kind of fuzzy logic (and I use that term more broadly than it’s technical definition.)

Well I’ve always wanted to poke around in that world. But I never quite knew where to start (ah the failings of having skipped out on my edumacation.)

Corewars frankly is just too hard a place to start. Those people are insane. There are a number of other ‘inspired by’ type frameworks I seem to remember. Design your own tank and let your bot loose to compete with others, etc.

There’s what I’m assuming is the high end and that’s taking video games and building add-on characters (NPCs) that would have complex behaviors like “knowing how to take cover when being shot at” and “running for help.” I’d always heard that those were (with some hackery) able to be built in to certain FPSs. Sounds juicy. But I think starting small would be a better tactic.

Then there was a different category. Sort of an evolutionary petri dish where there was food, obstacles, predators, etc. and the “guys” would have simple little behaviors describing how they’d move towards food, interact with each other, etc. It’s a bit tough to describe if you don’t know what I mean (I’m guessing.) When you run these things it looks like a multi-colored Conway Life field. In the large, you’d be able to watch as patterns and group behaviors seemed to emerge.

I’d had it in my mind to come up with one of these things from scratch, which seems like an awful lot of fun. But I’m going to look around the toobz and see if I can’t find something that’s done most of the up front work.

Tough to know how to google this stuff. I’m probably going to have to play the “Wikipedia Free Association” game to find concrete resources.

UPDATE: Happens every time I claim something’s hard to find. Zooland and ALife’s link page

Meh. oh, nevermind. There’s just too much out there. It’s positively discouraging.

There’s a game, Fallout 3. It has a wonderful “past future” post-apocalyptic setting. Think golden age 50’s visions of the future…gone sour.

So it’s some indeterminate time in the future, the world’s been pretty much blown up and you were raised in a huge underground shelter.

You eventually encounter a radio station being broadcast with some plot line, “news” and a wonderful play list that most people who’ve read this far will double take.

Having had quite enough programming and FX research for an evening I started playing and after about an hour I quit so I could go dig up some info on the music. I found the list just now over on BeefJack (*shrug*)

Check this out (the videos I linked to on youtube are for the most part stills or clips from the game, so they’re a little …well… icky):

• Butcher Pete — Roy Brown
• I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire — The Ink Spots
• Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall — The Ink Spots & Ella Fitzgerald This one seems to start half way through the song, at the bridge. Haven’t found the full length version yet.
• Way Back Home — Bob Crosby and the Bobcats
• Anything Goes — Cole Porter with Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks I don’t think this is the same version. The in-game version is much richer tonally. The vocals are far far better as well. But this’ll give you an idea.
• Maybe — The Ink Spots The video’s a little grim, but it does have the lyrical subtitles.  This is one of my favorites ;)
• Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo) — Danny Kaye
• Happy Times — Bob Crosby and the Bobcats
• Mighty Mighty Man — Roy Brown
• Crazy He Calls Me — Billie Holiday This doesn’t seem to be available on youtube. Damn shame that, it’s a wonderful tune.
• A Wonderful Guy — Tex Beneke

Now, there are a couple missing from that list, but it’s a damn good start.

These things are really getting better.

UPDATE: Among the missing:

Easy Living - Billie Holiday

Let’s Go Sunning I don’t know who this is yet. Gimme a break, it’s 2:45 in the morning.

(I’ll populate these links and flesh this out for a bit, as I’m inspired.)

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” Thomas Jefferson