US military: Build artificial intelligible parents

The US military has begun the process of building virtual parents to temporarily replace soldiers who are sent to war zones or other distant places. The Department of Defense is soliciting bids to build the system:

Topic Num: OSD09-H03 (OSD/DHP)
Objective: To develop a highly interactive PC or web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with “virtual” renditions of deployed Service Members.

The child should be able to have a simulated conversation with a parent about generic, everyday topics. For instance, a child may get a response from saying “I love you”, or “I miss you”, or “Good night mommy/daddy.” This is a technologically challenging application because it relies on the ability to have convincing voice-recognition, artificial intelligence, and the ability to easily and inexpensively develop a customized application tailored to a specific parent.

This is part of the Defense Department’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

But at least some of the psychologists solicited to build it are not keen on the idea.

A bit of history: In the early 1960s Joseph Weizenbaum built ELIZA, the first “artificial intelligence”-based program that would carry on a seemingly ordinary conversation with a human being. Weizenbaum did it partly to demonstrate: (a) how easy it was to build a computer program that does a poor job of being human, and (b) how hard it is to build one that does any actual thinking or caring. Weizenbaum became appalled at how quickly and fervently people celebrated ELIZA as being the first of a new worldful of thinking, caring robots.