Will Second Life Users Need to Take a Voight-Kampff Test? Philip Rosedale Promises Town Hall on Controversial Uses of A.I. in Second Life

I love when a classic science fiction concept becomes a practical reference point in current technology, and that happened during the most recent Town Hall in Second Life, when a user challenged Linden Lab CTO Philip Rosedale over his excitement around A.I., most recently seen with the company's partnership launch of AI-powered NPCs in SL.

Asking: "Look, I understand that Philip loves his A.I. and thinks it's the future, but I don't understand the insane push and force it in Second Life. Will AI rally around a creator when their pet is sick? Will AI support people when their parent dies? What do you have to say to that?"

Here's Philip's answer in full, replete with that perfect Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep reference:

I love that question, and how it's phrased.

I think, as I touched on earlier, A.I. means an increasingly large set of things I mentioned earlier. For example, that A.I. is used to do language translation. I suspect that most people here would like us to use A.I. for language translation.

On the other hand, as you say, A.I. avatars that are living in the world, brings up a very different set of considerations. Chief among those is, in the extent that Second Life is open and is generally designed to be a system where people can make their own /choices, for example, about content creation: How does A.I. fit into that?

And I think in that regard, we'll have a separate Town Hall, and we'll talk about it. What if we didn't want A.I. in the [virtual] world, what would that mean? Do we all have to take a Voight-Kampff test every few days?

But I welcome the opportunity to talk about that more, and I definitely respect the complexity of it. There's a lot to it.

I think the other [claim to] mention here is A.I. exists on stolen data. That argument, of course, is one that's going on in the world, big time right now. Like to what extent does the common crawl, which is the Internet as we know it today, to what extent should that be used for training A.I.s?

I again appreciate the complexity of that debate, and I look forward to the world stage answering it. You know, perhaps country by country, as we as we figure out what everybody feels, I think it's a fair and appropriate discussion.

I think the separate issues in a virtual world of why, or whether you use A.I. say to be a person is extraordinarily interesting and perhaps a conversation that's more uniquely ours to have as you know, the preeminent virtual world with adults in it, doing all kinds of different things, and building all kinds of different things.

So I think, I hope that [Second Life] can actually be a town hall and a forum in which good conversation and progress can be made about A.I., as I think we've been in many different ways over the years.

I hope to explore those topics with Philip further, especially because his answer here, while interesting, somewhat talks past the original question's intent. For one thing, AI-powered NPCs are still obvious, intrusive, usually annoying, and not anything like Rachael from Blade Runner. And I wouldn't plan on them getting massively better any time soon. 

Even more key: Creators in Second Life are increasingly worried about the use of Gen AI in the content economy, while Gen AI-fueled "fast fashion" will probably erode the community/creator relationship that exists now with beloved virtual brands. That's the key topic Linden Lab needs addressing.

But what, then, is the right answer? I originally considered posing this as a reader survey, but gave up when I realized there were not many viable, non-controversial ways of regulating a technology that's already flooded the ecosystem.

More soon. Until then, stay tuned for that Town Hall which is sure to be a banger.

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Comments

[Zidders Roofurry]

What a complete non-answer. Way to shove it off to this supposed meaning in order to completely sidestep the issue.

[Tami]

AI won't go away, as much as I'd wish it would, I know that it is here to stay. So, let's try and focus on AI as a complement, a supplement, or a tool that benefits SL. For example, instead of AI generated clothing, let's have AI as a tool to help clothing designers realise their visions when they run into technical hurdles and issues. Yes, I know that this idea can be abused, so the issue isn't "how to use AI" but on "how to prevent AI from usurping humans" in SL. In some ways, the past methods of creating content for years, learning over time to become better creators, are in danger. Can we stop AI from short-circuiting that process -- probably not. So, what can we do do to prevent AI from taking over the content creation market?

Perhaps, we can't stop AI, so maybe the answer is to make it easier to use. Instead of everyone buying things on the marketplace, anyone and everyone can create their own magical world filled with things they used AI to create. Instead of SL being driven by the economy, it can be driven by creativity using AI to make the dreams come true. SL doesn't have to be RL and moving away from economic models and wealth isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's change, and SL is well know for its resiliency with regard to change.

I don't want AI, but I will use it to make SL better if that is my only choice.

[Riannah]

Ai will likely kill the SL economy as we know it. When everyone can just go to a website and have an Ai spit out what they want, why would they purchase anything? And there will be so many people trying to sell Ai generated content that it will drive the prices down so low, that it's just not worth actually creating a thing.

Why does this matter? People often create to resell in order to pay for things in SL, including land. All of the things that cost money in SL is also what LL makes money on. If people don't buy land, LL loses that money. If people don't buy content, LL loses the commission on MP.

I just really wonder how LL thinks it all will work.

[Luther Weymann]

I was over on Shermerville the other day looking at 1024s. To buy Premium for $100 and to buy a 1024 on Shermerville for $700 would cost you $800 to get started in SL. This cost is seemingly like this all over SL except abandoned land. I started SL life on C Street in Shermerville 17 years ago and stop back occasionally to see the old place. In the past 17 years I've never seen the percentage of land for sale and for rent as great as it is right now. It used to be Shermerville would have 1 or 2 places for sale or rent but right now the buy or rent is a total of about 35. Something seems off here, that to get on a nice mainland costs you $800 and a place that used to be totally sold out is now 50% vacant.