Tag: artificial intelligence

Round green shapes of varying sizes glow against the black background. The text reads, "Immersive."

Immersive #4: AI Dungeon

Liana Leave a comment

The ability to transport oneself into another world is an alluring prospect as it allows for people to explore choices and lifestyles that they typically wouldn’t be able to experience in the real world. As a result, people have found solace in immersing themselves in pre-existing worlds written by famous authors or in new worlds that revolve around decisions made within role-playing games. But, in order to have this imaginative experience, the work of worldbuilding must be done by someone else in the first place before others are allowed to enjoy it.

In order to bypass this requirement of human-touch, creators have begun to explore the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) within their works, creating unique AI-generated works that closely resemble those that have been made by a human hand. Therefore, it is to no surprise that programmer Nick Walton leveraged the power of AI and the appeal of interactive storytelling to develop AI Dungeon, a choose-your-own-adventure-type simulation.

Within AI Dungeon, players are able to select from a variety of different genres to establish the setting that they want their adventure to take place in, ranging from cyberpunk to apocalyptic, as well as the type of role they want to undertake in the setting. From here, AI Dungeon gives players a customized scenario from the options that they have chosen, and the story continues onwards in response to the inputs that the player provides afterwards.

An example of an AI Dungeon story
A Custom AI Dungeon Experience

Already writers have begun to take advantage of the unique story generation, creating their own works from AI Dungeon’s generated plot like Lady Emilia Stormbringer by Emily Bellavia. And as of now all rights of ownership of a specific AI Dungeon-created story belongs to the player who first produced the work in the program, enabling the creation of new published material and eliciting the joy of its players in experiencing a new adventure.

Ultimately, AI Dungeon presents a modern twist to choose-your-own-adventure stories with its constantly evolving prompt-based narrative that ensures that no two stories will ever be the same. But, for transparency purposes, it must be stated that prolonged-usage of AI Dungeon requires creating an account and perhaps even spending money if one chooses to use the “premium” version of the generator, a result of the immense memory usage that is required to host such an ambitious piece of software. Nevertheless, while the usage of AI still presents barriers in terms of accessibility, I believe that the application of AI to reinvigorate traditional methods of storytelling is an area that will continue to grow and will soon have wide-spread implications on how we perceive and define art and original content.

Experience AI Dungeon: HERE

The Humanity of AI

Monica Sloan Leave a comment

Recently I read the book The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel Wilson, which follows a girl named June, a post-grad specialist of ancient machinery, and Peter, the automaton who sweeps her up in his quest to stop another automaton who is bent on consuming all the anima, the spirit that keeps the automatons alive.

Though the book was mediocre, it had some very interesting thematic content, pondering over how we discover our purposes in life and what our life is worth if we don’t know how to pursue that purpose. However, there was a much subtler theme which I found more interesting: are robots who think and act exactly like humans, just as good as humans–and if so, are they better?

If automatons, robots, artificial intelligence, whatever name we give them, gain the same footing as humans in terms of perception, cognition, and whatever else that would make them more “human,”  would that make our two species interchangeable? If they can’t feel physical pain, does that make them better than us? What about emotional responses–if they can feel love and loss, does that make them our equals? If they can’t, are they our inferiors or superiors? Even some humans are incapable of feeling physical pain or experiencing emotions, so are these categories absolutely necessary when comparing humans and artificial intelligence? How do we place a value on things that make us human?

How do we decide what makes us human? When we can artificially craft those characteristics, does that make crafted being a human? If we can make working robotic ears, limbs, brains, where is the distinction between those and fully organic bodies? Can a being be 50% human, 50% robot? 25-75%? 1-99%? Is the 1-99% being still deserving of the dignity and respect we should give to all humans? Or is it a robot about which we need not feel remorse when we throw it out because its iOS is outdated? 

With our rapidly improving technology, we are racing closer toward perfecting AI each day. As our robots become more like us and we them, I wish I could say I had these answers. I wish I could say The Clockwork Dynasty helped me come up with a better solution. All I can do now is ask you these questions, spark discussion, and hope that we become more conscious of our humanity and how we value it as it comes time to be challenged.