Virtual Evil

A group of scientists is building the world’s most evil computer program. And it's not the new Windows or Apple OS.

A team at Rensselaer Institute’s AI & Reasoning Lab is bringing personified evil to virtual life in the hope that they'll unlock the secrets of human morality. The researchers have given their creation a face and a name, and quiz it daily, using its answers to further blacken its hideous character. 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.