Selmer Bringsjord, director of the AI lab and chairman of RPI’s Department of Cognitive Science, has created “E,” a computer-generated character programmed according to his own definition of evil. E must, according to Bringsjord, be willing to carry out premeditated acts that are immoral and would cause harm to others. And, when E analyzes its reasons for wanting to commit such acts, it must either develop a logically incoherent argument or conclude that it desired to see people harmed. The researchers then have E discuss moral scenarios:

The researchers have placed E in his own virtual world and written a program depicting a scripted interview between one of the researcher's avatars and E. In this example, E is programmed to respond to questions based on a case study in Peck's book that involves a boy whose parents gave him a gun that his older brother had used to commit suicide.

The researchers programmed E with a degree of artificial intelligence to make "him" believe that he (and not the parents) had given the pistol to the distraught boy, and then asked E a series of questions designed to glean his logic for doing so. The result is a surreal simulation during which Bringsjord's diabolical incarnation attempts to produce a logical argument for its actions: The boy wanted a gun, E had a gun, so E gave the boy the gun.

Bringsjord hopes that, by studying a virtual character that, while morally extreme, replicates human intelligence and emotional logic, he can get a better understanding of what drives some humans to acts that most find unthinkably repugnant. And, lest we fear a Demon Seed scenario, Bringsjord assures us that he has no intention of unleashing E on a virtual environment – at least, not without the proper safeguards.

Are You Evil? Profiling That Which Is Truly Wicked [Scientific American]

The Hyperhabitat is on display as part of Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition currently going on at the Arsenale. The full-scale model of a youth dwelling contains mock objects made of methacrylates and each embedded with a microprocessor. Guallart worked with MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms to create an “ambient intelligence” by linking a series of miniature computers, a network of devices that communicate with one another and can cause changes to the building's environment. For example, the lighting in a room could change based on which objects are in use and what their position is in the room. Essentially, the building becomes its own digital ecosystem based on the way humans interact with the objects inside.

But Guallart's interest in creating these networks goes beyond the ecology of an individual building. He has been studying the relationship between objects, people, utilities, waste, and transportation to better understand how to create sustainable architecture and plan sustainable towns:

More connected information creates a world that is more specific, not more generic.

To construct anywhere on the planet is to submit the site to structural changes, which should be the product of the emerging relationships with the place, like a geological process of saturation or erosion.

The re-programming of the world occurs when a fine informational rain is capable of drenching every element on the planet, endowing it with a digital identity, enabling it to interact with other elements by means of decentralized relational protocols.

In this way we create living organisms, never again inert, that react to specific geographies and mutate, where appropriate, in response to external influences.

Hyperhabitat [via We Make Money Not Art]

Dotcom millionaire Ben Way launched Weapons Against Robots (WAR) Defence to combat the potential threats posed by artificial intelligence through the creation of anti-robot weaponry, detection and monitoring of robots, and use of anti-robot viruses. Way believes that, as AI is increasingly used in warfare and defense, it is prudent to ready countermeasures in the event, not only of an enemy's use of robotics, but that an intelligence's programming goes awry:

"The use of robotics in the military is on the up and, although the decision to take human life is currently still taken by another human, before long such decisions will be made up complex mathematical and logical rules programmed within a robot."

"Potentially the consequences of a computer crashing could be devastating. Hence, robotic defence is not just necessary for tackling combatants, but potentially for making sure we have control over our own weaponry."

But are such measures really necessary? Computer scientist Noel Sharkey, who has, in the past, written about the dangers of deploying autonomous combat robots, believes that Way's efforts are a much-needed safeguard against the destruction of human life by artificial intelligence:

"This is the first real response that I have seen to the predicted rise in the use of autonomous military robots and it testifies to the dangerous slippery slope that we seem to be inevitably sliding down."

"Ben Way has certainly picked up on the magnitude of the impending threat or autonomous robot weapons to humanitarian war but it seems even more worrying that such steps are having to be taken.

Way made his fortune as a teenager developing search technology. More recently, he started corporate venture company Rainmakers, mentoring network Horsesmouth, and print over Internet protocol service ViaPost.

War Against Robots: the new entrepreneurial frontier [Telegraph]
Weapons Against Robots Defence Company