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(Caution: Four-year-old Eddie might just tear your heart out. That’s because he’s built on an AI framework for the military. Images: RPI)

Cognitive scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute claim to have created a Second Life avatar with the reasoning skills of a four-year-old child.

The artificial child, “Eddie,” runs on an RPI supercomputer, and comes from a lab funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Selmer Bringsjord, leader of the RPI research team that created “Eddie,” says applications for the tyke might include “homeland defense.”

That’s because Eddie also goes by the name, “Edd.”

And Edd (below) is a baddass homeland security robot who looks like the villainous machine in the film, Robocop. Both Eddie and Edd are based on the Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Architecture for “Living” Systems, or RASCALS, an artificial life form platform created for military and intelligence operations.

Eddie’s supercomputing descendants will be much more capable of mimicking humans than he is.

“Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things.” – Bringsjord

The Pentagon and Homeland Security would then be free to use synthetic characters as spies inworld, for example. There they will able to operate undetected, and unhindered by the pangs of a truly human conscience.

Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Troy, N.Y. – Today’s video games and online virtual worlds give users the freedom to create characters in the digital domain that look and seem more human than ever before. But despite having your hair, your height, and your hazel eyes, your avatar is still little more than just a pretty face.