An artificially intelligent baby could unlock the secrets of human nature

BabyX, the virtual, artificially intelligent creation of Mark Sagar and his new company, Soul Machines Ltd., looks, sounds, and acts so much like a real baby that interacting with her produces a genuine emotional response -- just like the kind you get when a real baby coos and giggles at you. That's exactly the point: BabyX makes it appealing to humans to interact with an AI, and each instance of interaction teaches her more about what it's like being human. Sagar is a force for the humanization of AI, which he believes may be important to installing a symbiotic relationship between humans and AIs. Many AI experts argue that robots and AI systems can only realize their full potential if they become more like humans, with emotions and memories informing their behavior and decision; those are the things that motivate us to seek out new experiences. Sagar's techniques in this area are radically innovative, in that his detailed, artistically-rendered faces mask biological models and simulations of unprecedented complexity.