US Army to invade World of Warcraft with AI

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 6th November 2008

Arnie might have been more recognisable, but we'd prefer to stare at Summer Glau's version of the Terminator instead.

The US Army has announced that it is to start testing a new type of artificial intelligence in public through the servers for Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

You heard us; SkyNet is coming to Azeroth!

The new AI has been designed by Dr. John Parmentola for the US military and is intended to be used to control holographic soldiers for use in training exercise and battle simulation. As an early test though the Army is to upload the AI to World of Warraft and see if it can successfully pass itself off as a human player.

"We want to use the massively multi-player online game as an experimental laboratory to see if they’re good enough to convince humans that they’re actually human, that can think on their own, have emotions and talk in local slang," said Dr. John in a statement to the press.

"I actually interact with virtual humans in terms of asking them questions and they’re responding."

According to Gizmodo this is just one of several crazy-sounding projects that the Army is currently working on. Other projects include researching technology to erase memories that cause trauma, creating nanites that can rebuild limbs and finding ways that soldiers can play MMOs all day without getting fired.

Think you've spotted an AI wandering across Azeroth? Let us know what he looked like in the forums.