My friends at the Digital Media Collaboratory at the University of Texas at Austin have been working on a very cool artificial intelligence. The idea behind the research was to develop an artificial intelligence program that allowed humans to train in-game characters to react in certain ways to certain situations – with each evolution of the characters retaining their memory. In other words, you teach the computer-generated characters how to learn.

My friend Aliza Gold, whom I first met in Austin a few years back, has been keeping me up to date on the program as time allows. She’s wicked smart, and I spent several afternoons drinking coffee with her, trying to keep up with what she was talking about. Along with the release of the game is the actual research over at the site.

There’s a nice, big conversation going on at Slashdot about this as well.