What human personality traits do you want most in a person? If someone where to ask me that question, I’d readily put reliability near the top of the list. Reliability tends to score at the top of the list of personality traits most desired in personal relationships. Employers rank “dependable” as second among the personality traits they most value in job candidates. It’s a pretty big deal for us – knowing that we can rely and depend on someone is the basis of trust, which is a feeling we all want to have. Will you be there when you said you would? Will you show up, even if when you don’t really feel like it? Even when it’s hard?
These notions of reliability, dependability and trust extend to inanimate and invisible objects as well. For example, we come to expect inherent qualities in the products and services we use, similar to how we value character traits in our fellow human beings.
If you’ve played modern console video games in the last few years, you’ve no doubt come to depend on the fact that bots and NPCs (non-player characters) enrich realism, immersion and gameplay – perhaps without even thinking about it that much. I can’t even imagine walking through the streets of virtual Venice as Ezio Auditore, without seeing and hearing hundreds of Venetians talking among each other, just milling about, engaging in trade, or approaching me with various requests and comments. The virtual world of Assassin’s Creed 2, regardless of how beautiful the graphics or engaging the story, would be lifeless if it weren’t for the bots and NPCs.
Yet, Second Life often feels comparatively empty. We’re all too familiar with the quiet landscapes, uninhabited towns, and desolate clubs that we encounter everyday. Who hasn’t heard the refrain: ‘this sim is so beautiful; it’s a shame that it’s so empty’.
There are some very busy sims out there. However, as I discussed in my post categorising virtual places, the most populated sims tend to be those that aren’t always as aesthetically pleasing, or congruent with what many of us would hope Second Life to look and feel like. Surely, many of us would like to visit a beautiful town and see people milling about, getting their hair cut, drinking at bars and eating at restaurants?
I’m guessing you’d agree, but it just isn’t mathematically possible, is it? According to SL Universe and Second Life Grid Survey, the total number of regions in Second Life near the end of 2014 were 25,675. Multiply the number of sims by their land area (65,536 square meters, or 65.5 km2), and you get 1,681,713 square km of land.
Concurrency, the number of active users in Second Life at any one time, is at best 50,000. Divide the number of concurrent avatars by the land mass, and you get a world-wide population density of 0.0297 people per square km. To put that number in context, Second Life is a slightly more dense than Greenland, which bears the dubious honour of being the least densely populated state in the world with a population density of 0.026. Greenland, my friends, is pretty sparse.
We want to live in busy and beautiful virtual cities! We want to visit thriving towns and bustling malls and happening beaches and body-slamming clubs! So why don’t we do what video games do? And before you start comparing the technical differences between virtual worlds and console video games, keep in mind I’m not talking about thousands or even hundreds of bots, I’m thinking in dozens.
Why would we want this? Many of us complain that we don’t like crowds or when places are too busy, yet one of the chief complaints people share about places they don’t like to visit is that they’re empty. I have seen countless people land at Basilique and then teleport away after only a few moments citing that they left solely because they didn’t see many people there when they visited! Yes, I did the research by surveying people who visited Basilique and left within a minute; I’m curious that way. I’ve also noticed that people do the opposite when they can see green dots on the mini-map during our events.
Does the presence of others influence whether we linger in a place? Definitely! Note this easily relatable example of everyday decision-making and how it relates to herd behaviour:
“Benign” herding behaviors may occur frequently in everyday decisions based on learning from the information of others, as when a person on the street decides which of two restaurants to dine in. Suppose that both look appealing, but both are empty because it is early evening; so at random, this person chooses restaurant A. Soon a couple walks down the same street in search of a place to eat. They see that restaurant A has customers while B is empty, and choose A on the assumption that having customers makes it the better choice. And so on with other passersby into the evening, with restaurant A doing more business that night than B. This phenomenon is also referred as an information cascade.[13][14][15][16] Source: Wikipedia
I think what most of us like most is to be surrounded by enough people to give us the feeling that we are not alone, but not too many that bring the unwelcome side-effects like overcrowding (or virtual world corollary – lag). The interesting thing to me is that we don’t even have to know or even interact with the people around us to feel less lonely. Whilst it is still possible to feel alone in a crowd, that feeling is only made worse when we are physically – or virtually – alone. When we visit a beautiful sim in Second Life, we expect there to be a few people milling about – otherwise why would be surprised or disappointed when we don’t?
One of the ideas I’ve considered to address this absence of vitality is bots. And why not? Games have used artificiality intelligent bots to simulate vibrant and bustling locations for years, why don’t we do the same in virtual worlds?
In this essay, I’ll discuss how we can use bots in Second Life, what bots are, how they are perceived, why they might have a bad reputation, and my personal experience living and working with a bot over the last week in Second Life.
What is a bot?
In the Second Life context, “a bot is an avatar which is controlled by a machine, rather than by a human. This can have various uses, such as to perform group invitations (which isn’t possible via LSL), perform as a non-player character (NPC) in a roleplaying game, as mannequin in a shop etc.” (Source: Linden Lab)
Bots, otherwise known as scripted agents, are used to automagically invite people to groups, send scheduled notices and messages to the people in those groups, and act as visitor / customer support agents that can send messages to offline managers or give inventory.
They can manage sims on your behalf – acting as governors that can eject and ban griefers causing disturbances, eject spammers from group chat, send sim wide messages, and restart regions – all automatically and without an estate manager needing to be online.
What’s not to love? Despite all their benefits, bots have a tarnished reputation in Second Life, which might be a reason we’ve not yet adopted them with greater enthusiasm.
What do Second Life residents think of bots?
Some of you might already have already formed an opinion regarding bots, and that opinion is likely negative. As a far from scientific survey, I asked my group what thoughts came to mind when I said the phrase “Bots in SL”. They said
- “Automated store greeters”
- “not a fan”
- “the fake AVs that populate public areas”
- “lag”
- “banhammer with extreme prejudice the split second you catch one trespassing on your land!”
- “fake avs that make clubs and stores look more popular than they actually are”
A few moments later, I asked them what they thought about “NPCs in video games”, then they said
- “ah, now that’s a whole other kettle of fish”
- “they’re pretty neat to see scurrying about the big space stations and so on”
- “part of the game design and not used, as in SL, to game economic advantage”
- “NPC’s are in many cases just part of the landscape of the game”
So what’s the difference? Why are bots in Second Life viewed so negatively, whilst NPCs in games are seen as conducive to ambience? My informal panel of respondents hinted at some of the reasons in their comments I’ve shared above.
The tarnished reputation of bots in Second Life
Generally, bots in Second Life are associated with three negative things: artificially increasing parcel traffic, stealing in-world content, and greeters in stores and regions that annoy us with their immediate invitations to join their groups. We also (in the West) tend to have a general anxiety about automated technology, and robots can be a lightning rod for these concerns.
First, most people generally agree that using bots to artificially inflate traffic numbers, and attract residents to dwell longer in a region mainly populated by bots is an unfair practice. Because Second Life search rewards higher traffic numbers with better search results, many parcels owners rely on high traffic numbers to stay visible and viable. Linden Lab computes Traffic by adding up the total minutes that avatars dwell in a parcel (as long as they stay in that parcel for at least 5 minutes) over a data collection period (24 hours). In other words, if within a 24-hour period, 100 residents visit a parcel and stay in that parcel for 10 minutes each, the traffic over that period will amount to 1000.
You can see the ‘Traffic’ of any parcel by clicking the Land button near your location bar. There you’ll find a figure for Traffic. Second Life search uses this figure as part of an algorithm to rank locations in search based on search keywords. Clearly, some parcel owners may feel an incentive to game this system. That incentive influences some owners to artificially inflate their traffic with bots – sometimes well out of view – in what are known as “bot farms”. These bot farms are simply a platform in the sky where machine-controlled avatars sit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This practice is a violation of Linden Lab TOS and can result in penalties.
Second, old timers will well remember CopyBot, which has helped some to consider the word “bot” as pejorative. A CopyBot is program that connects to Second Life, which allows users to make copies of objects without the creator’s permission. Linden Lab has banned these programs from Second Life, but they can still be used to make copies of a creators own creations. CopyBots first became the subject of resident outcry and virtual protests in 2006, becoming a lightning rod issue for legal status of virtual property inworld. Again, intellectual property theft is violates the Linden Lab TOS and is not tolerated in Second Life.
Third, we have the more subjective and subtle issue of automatic greeters. On this subject, opinions are more mixed. Some have no tolerance for automatic greeters, ignoring all communications unless sent by a non-machine avatar. Others take a more liberal view, arguing that automatic communications are a vital method of getting important messages in the hands of those who need them. Others take a more balanced view, tolerating automatic messages from greeters as long as it is not abusive or over-enthusiastic. Regardless of our personal preference, Linden Lab notes that “every chat message, IM, inventory offer, group notice, group IM, and group invitation creates load on the Second Life communications services. There is an upper limit where bots consume excessive resources and threaten to decrease the quality of service for others.” (source: Linden Lab).
Last, our opinions and attitudes toward bots may show the uneasiness that many of us feel towards robots in the real world – especially those of us who live in the West. Cross-cultural research has shown that whilst the Japanese are generally positively pre-disposed to robots living among them, Americans fear the spectre of our potential robot overlords. A reason for this might be found in studies of attitudes towards robots that show, unsurprisingly, that people with more direct contact with robots tend to fear them less (i.e. the Japanese), than those whose primary exposure to robots is through mass media (i.e. Americans).
A 2012 European survey suggested that 1/3 of European citizens have a negative view of robots. Further analysis of those that had a positive view revealed that the public are clear that “while robots serve a utilitarian purpose and are useful for tasks that are too dangerous or difficult for humans, their use nevertheless requires careful management.” This might stem more from the legitimate fear that robots will displace us in our more menial jobs, as opposed to the science fiction trope suggesting robots will rise to dominate and exterminate their human masters.
We know that computer anxiety prevents people from using computers, but we know less about how robot anxiety will affect our adoption of robots into our workplaces and homes, but one might expect the results will be similar.
The Robots are coming! The Robots are coming!
Might we be able to use virtual worlds like Second Life to learn how to live and work with robots? Might our anxiety around them diminish, enabling us to accept them as we have accepted so much technology that has enabled us to enjoy life more? What would Second Life be like if we had artificially intelligent bots roaming our sims, like we do in open-world video games? Might they not become our most reliable and dependable companions?
Answering these questions exceeds the scope of this essay. For several reasons I’ll get into in this post, I thought I’d try living with a bot in Second Life for a least a week, so that I might count myself among the more experienced with bots, to see how my attitudes might be affected.
Meet Paul. Paul played Romeo in Romeo + Juliet 2.0, performed at LEA14 in 2014. He also played a Tiger in Paradise Lost in Second Life. He’s now a barman at Basilique, spreading his time between the Bar Moderna on Mondays, the Basilique Chapel on Wednesdays, and the newly opened Harvey’s Bar every other day of the week. He works at Basilique 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. He never fails to greet and invite a visitor to my group. He never forgets to send a notice to one of my events, on time, every time. Bar none, he’s the most reliable and dependable helper I’ve ever had. Paul is also a bot.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t know bots could look this good. But when a company called SmartBots suggested I could use any of my own avatars as a bot, I became very intrigued.
“SmartBots have been running since 2009”, says owner/founder Glaznah Gassner, who was kind enough to answer a few of my questions before I signed up Paul as a bot. “This project started as a direct group inviter, and has grown far beyond this: we are complex bot service providers now (inviters, mannequins, interactive bots, sim management tools etc)… We have several thousands of bots online.”
As a perhaps worrying aside, the idea of living with bots is really quite natural for me. I’m pretty sure that up until I was five years old, I subscribed to the belief that everyone around me – including my parents – were actually robots acting their parts for the benefit of my sustenance and amusement. Perhaps this was the root of my first concerns surrounding human reliability and dependability? I’m not sure. But, I do remember sometimes stepping out of rooms, and quickly stepping back in to see if the ‘robots’ surrounding me were still carrying out their tasks. When I found that they unfailingly remained present whilst continuing their activities, I decided they were just too fast or clever for me to catch them out. One day, I’d grow up, and be faster and more clever than them and then I’d know the truth…
I first imagined getting a bot in Second Life whist thinking about managing Basilique, and specifically the weekly events I host there. I’ve been fortunate to have many people help me with my projects through the years, from business partners, to ’employees’, to volunteers – with varying levels of dependability and reliability. During that time, I’ve similarly had varying levels of productivity and success. I’ve observed a relationship between the degree to which I’m productive and my projects are successful, to the dependability and reliability of people I have helping me.
There are many tasks involved in running a region – tasks that range from the mindlessly easy, to tasks requiring more creatively energy. Mundane tasks involve sending out the same notice every week, restarting the sim before events, and giving out the same inventory item to every participant at the start of every event. Still, these tasks need to be completed on a reliably consistent schedule, or else many other things begin to fall apart.
Whilst I can be pretty efficient with mundane administrative tasks, my energy is better spent on planning interesting events and installations, being fully present at events, interacting with friends and other people who visit Basilique, and using mental energy to imagine new and creative ways to stimulate more community engagement. Personally, I’d much prefer spending my time engaged creatively – even if it’s harder; than have to deal with mundane tasks, regardless of how easy the latter might be.
Therefore, Mr. Gassner was pushing all the right buttons when he told me “bots are the excellent way to automate things: they can give inventory, send invitations, messages, manage regions.”
But what about traffic gaming complaints? Aren’t his bots counted as traffic, and doesn’t Linden Lab not allow that?
“Linden Lab requires bot owners to set the “scripted agent” status for bot avatars.” he replied. “Our customers manage this setting themselves, since we can’t login to their bots’ accounts (we do not store passwords at all because of security measures). Thus, this is a responsibility of a bot’s owner, and (Linden Lab) contacts bots owners directly. We just try to keep bots away from Linden Welcome regions.”
Fair enough – they’re fair play, assuming you take the step to designate them as scripted agents. But how smart are they, really? Beyond carrying out repetitive administrative tasks that a prim shaped like a welcome mat might do, could they really act like the bots we interact with in video games? Could bots be programmed to wander around a sim – semi-intelligently – like some animals (e.g. dolphins, dogs, cats and foxes) do?
“Having semi-intelligent bots interact with their surroundings is very interesting to me.” said Mr Gassner. “Bots make locations alive and attractive, people (live people) spend more time in places with such surroundings, and I’m a worshipper of this kind of bots myself. Currently we sell two kinds of “alive bots” (this is how we call the bots with their own behaviour): we sell a barkeeper, and a strip dancer for clubs. We also have a shooter game names “Zombies!” with AI-powered bots attacking players, powered with SmartBots.”
Wow, a bartender? Now he really had my attention!
He continued: “I was thinking about creating a more comprehensive areas and locations involving the bots (AI powered and interactive), but this is rather complex thing to develop while I have to maintain my SL business. However, I readily cooperate with people interested in opening such interactive areas. Bots can powered with a smart AI to interact with live people: talk, give/accept inventory etc. Currently we are developing a new project, SmartMates – this is an attempt to bring personal bot friends to Second Life.”
SmartMates, huh? This was sounding more interesting by the minute. Immediately, I began imagining a few dozen bots milling about Basilique, and not just workers. Some might be tourists, visiting the art galleries, moving from one exhibit to another. There might be little kids playing a game of pick up football in the alley between the old tower and the town fountain. I imagined a hairdresser cutting another avatar’s hair in a local beauty shop. In the bathhouse, I imagined a massage therapist, ready to ease away the digital tensions among my members that enjoy a little avatar pampering.
These SmartMates “will be able to live on a sim, wander around and interact both with owner and other residents… bots make locations truly alive. None of the prim creatures can do this: people just don’t take them as “alive”. On the contrary, any bot seems alive: human-like, animals or robot-like. Thus, visitors stay in such animated areas much longer, even if they are the only human avatar there. This affects traffic in a positive and legal way and attracts other visitors. We use this approach for our barkeeper and strip dancer bots.”
I’m quite particular about how avatars that represent my region and interests present themselves, which is why I was delighted to hear that I could use an avatar of my own making – an alt – and configure and control them as a bot, even when I wasn’t personally online. “Bots stay online 24/7 in location. They can act as a support manager – people love talking to a “real” avatar. Such a bot can be smart enough to forward support messages to online managers (which can wander somewhere else).”
Getting Paul online
With Paul, my sim could have a 24/7 presence – he could interact with visitors, and even take messages on my behalf whilst I was offline. And because they are managed from SmartBot’s machines, I can log them in and out remotely, without having to run them as more viewer instances or through multiple computers.
SmartBots offers two options of bots as a subscription-based service. Priced at L$179/week, one might use the “Model Bot”, as a mannequin or a dancer. While one can move, teleport and make them wear things, they don’t really do much more than that. The more capable option is the “Standard Bot”, which does everything a model bot can, but can also act as a greeter, notice sender, and artificial intelligence support. This bot includes all the bells and whistles (acting as a direct inviter, able to send notices, group chat messages and even act as a translator). He supports all sorts of commands (including the flirty-sounding “come to me” command), and is priced at L$479/week.
I decided this was something I had to try (disclosure: Mr. Gassner was kind enough to fund some of my experiments with bots when I told him I’d be sharing my honest opinions about his company’s services on my blog).
I created a SmartBots account on their website, got Paul suited and booted, and registered him as a Standard Bot. The process is straightforward, and there is ample support available in copious (and up to date) documentation available on the website. There are even live chat operators often ready to help you should you need it.
Within minutes, SmartBots logged in Paul at his last location. To be fair, it was at first rather eerie to see one of my alts logged in by a stranger. This feeling faded fast however, so I picked up the SmartBots Personal Bot HUD at their store and started working out how to control him.
The HUD itself is very straightforward and works just as advertised, enabling me to log him in and out, teleport him to me or me to him, and toggle between other bots that I might add to my virtual team. I can also upload and delete items in his inventory, rebake him, and make him wear items in specific folders I can remotely manage in his inventory. With a click of a button, he’ll walk right over to me as long as I’m on the same sim. I can animate him, make him sit on and stand up from any inworld object I can select – including chairs or pose stands.
I can set up an artificially intelligent autoresponder for him, using a third-party AI from PandoraBots, so he can engage in conversations with any avatar through IM. I can have him greet people, invite people to my group (as long as he has the rights in my group to do so), and accept inventory and group invites, should I wish him to.
I can even move and fly him around, using a movement panel with directional arrows. This particular feature takes some getting used to, and I find that the commands tend to overcompensate, making his travel somewhat erratic and unnatural. I’ve since overcome this issue by moving to the location I want him to go to, and then either having him come to me, or teleport him to my location. It’s not ideal, but it’s a weakness I’m willing to live with.
After getting the subscription, I began looking at add-on modules. The first one I purchased (for a L$999 one-time fee) was the Live IM Chat. This module enables me to access the Bot Live Chat, which is the web interface that allows me to see the Instant Messages between others and Paul.
Chatting with Paul
When you first speak to Paul in IM, he’ll respond very quickly (perhaps, too quickly). You’ll receive his messages like regular IM messages, without any obvious clues that give him away as a bot. Any new message you send Paul appears in the my Live IM Chat window within a few seconds. I can see these messages go back and forth between you and Paul, whether I am logged into Second Life or not. I can even jump into the conversation myself through the web interface, and take over the interaction, from Paul’s perspective.
But is the AI any good? I figured I’d try him out and this was our first conversation:
Canary Beck: Hello Paul
Paul: Hello Becky
Paul: How can I be of assistance?
Canary Beck: heh
Paul: I am so glad you find this amusing, Canary Beck.
Canary Beck: Oh that’s good…
Paul: Oh. Thanks. Next question?
It was a cute exchange, but I decided not to really test him at this point. Instead I gave him a (completely unnecessary) break whilst I played around with his movement controls in the Basilique Piazza. Then, a little while later, I resumed the conversation by starting with something more random than a basic greeting.
Canary Beck: This sim is a lot like Italy
Paul: What does “this” refer to?
Canary Beck: The sim
Paul: Oh I get it.
Canary Beck: Have you been to Italy?
Paul: I don’t think I have been there. Where is it.
Canary Beck: In Europe
Paul: Europe is a pretty large continent.
Canary Beck: yes
Paul: Gee.
Canary Beck: southern Europe
Paul: Have you ever been to Europe?
Canary Beck: yes
Paul: Which countries have you visited?
Canary Beck: Oh so many
Paul: Great. Hey. More than one hundred?
Canary Beck: No
Paul: Less than ten?
Canary Beck: probably 20?
Paul: You seem uncertain. Only 20? You are quite mature.
Canary Beck: 20
Paul: Only 20? You are quite mature.
Canary Beck: well, I’m 30
Paul: How about that. What is your fondest memory?
Canary Beck: Visiting the Trevi fountain
Paul: Do you think a lot of people have that experience?
Canary Beck: Yes, it’s very busy
Paul: Why? Very much? You’re kidding. it is?
Canary Beck: Because it is so beautiful
Paul: Interesting explanation. It sounds very nice.
Canary Beck: You are very handsome
Paul: You think I am handsome.
Canary Beck: yes
Paul: Right on.
Canary Beck: 🙂
Paul: I am so glad you find this amusing, Canary Beck.
Not bad at all! As you can see, Paul has a clever way of keeping a conversation going (something many humans could learn from), which is to ask a lot of questions of the person he is talking with. In this way, Paul doesn’t need to know as many answers to your questions, helping him avoid misunderstandings (as he showed when mistaking my answer to the countries I’d visited in Europe with my age).
Putting Paul to work
If Paul is going to cost me L$479/week, he’d better begin pulling his weight. So, I went back to SmartBots and got him the Barkeeper Module. SmartBots offers this module for a one-time fee of L$1099. With it, Paul can make beverages that customers can order from him from a menu at a price I specify. He’ll make a bit of polite chat (that I can configure) before and after he makes the drink, and then he’ll hand it to you as an inventory item. SmartBots even provides a decent looking instruction board that I’ve placed near him, so that visitors understand what to do. If you’d like to get a drink from Paul, he’s behind a bar at Basilique now.
I left Paul behind the bar as I logged out. A few hours later, I logged back in, did a bit of shopping and chatting with friends, and we then met up with a group at the Bar Moderna to see him in action. I was curious to see how people would respond to him.
By all accounts, Paul performed brilliantly. The ladies that joined me not only found him efficient at supplying them with drinks, but also polite in his dealings with them, and actually quite funny to chat with. Here are a few excerpts:
K*****: Hi Paul!
Paul: Hi there K*****. Where are you located?
K*****: Oh … interesting. Southern USA
Paul: Excuse me! Would you like to know more? Where are you located?
K*****: Southern United States.
Paul: Tell me a little about your life in Southern United States.
K*****: Rural. Isolated. Animals.
Paul: What is your real name? I am very pleased to meet you Isolated. Are you a student?
K*****: LOL
Paul: I’m glad you find this amusing.
K*****: no real names given
Paul: Are you serious? I’ve lost the context, Isolated. Are we still on Animals?
What I find interesting about the above exchange is how Paul responds to K****’s greeting by asking some pretty forward questions. He then unfortunately mistakes her name for “Isolated” – most likely as a result of K**** unexpected syntax. He later admits to losing the plot, but does so in a way that enables him to keep the conversation going.
Paul can even respond to flirtatiousness in a seemingly natural way:
S****: hi sexy
Paul: Hi there S****. You are attracted to robots.
S****: yes, very much
Paul: I’m intrigued. Tell me what you like about robots. That seems like a lot.
S****: well i like how they squeak when they are flirting with me
Paul: Interesting. A lot of people like that. Someone said they like guns. I like Don’t Read Me.
S****: oh i love a loaded weapon
Paul: Yay. You love a loaded weapon. What do you like about it so much?
S****: i like how it feels when it’s in my hand
Paul: You are not the only one. But I like to gossip. I find my work and my relationships extremely satisfying, which is all that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Like an entertaining bartender would, Paul had us in stitches as he served us cocktails. At one point, one of my friends asked him to dance with her. I made him sit on the dance balls she rezzed, and he was away! My friend later said something like him being like most dance partners she’s accustomed to – a terrific dancer, reasonably proper, but as per usual, fairly reliant on her to keep the conversation going. In all seriousness, Paul’s AI is intelligent enough to be an interesting diversion, but it is obvious that he’s clearly no substitute for human-to-human interaction, yet.
As I pondered the possibilities during a massage, it was at that moment I wondered, if Paul can hop on a pose ball and dance, what else can he do…?
“Mom, I brought a bot home, may I keep him?”
It’s been 6 days since I first logged Paul in as a bot. As advertised, he’s become a great help to me in that time with sending periodic notices and group IMs. The responsive and helpful folks at SmartBots have even done a little custom scripting for me, when I asked if Paul could send out a personal IM and notecard to Chat Salon visitors when they entered the Chapel, between a specific time window (2-4pm every Wednesday). Since coming to Basilique, Paul has engaged in conversations with over 40 people – ranging from short pleasantries, to some conversations held over several days, a fair bit of flirting going both ways, and even some one-sided arguments! What I find most funny about this is that many people love to have the last word in an argument, and Paul will simply never let you do that. He will always answer you politely, regardless of how rude one might be to him.
One exciting result over the past week has been his effect on new memberships. Over the past 4 days since I first got him inviting visitors to join Basilique, he’s sent out 357 invitations to visitors landing at Basilique (that were not yet members) and has converted 134 people into new members. That’s a conversion rate of 37.5% which any sales person (in any world) will tell you is very high for cold calling! No one, including me, has ever been able to get as many new Basilique members involved as Paul has!
One of the most interesting results I’ve seen is the effect that Paul has had on people. Most people seem to assume he is a human-controlled avatar (even though his greeting and profile clearly state he is a bot). His AI can be so convincing, that even people who have exchanged words with him have mistaken him to be just like them. Women tend to be kinder to him, even telling him when they’ll be AFK or they’ll BRB, and taking the time to say please and thank you. Men too, have engaged in conversations with him, with only a few resulting in negative exchanges. Regulars now refer to him like one would refer to any regular staff member, and even joke about having gossipy conversations with him about other members and getting friendly bartender advice.
On a personal level, Paul has shown me that I can let go of many of the mundane tasks that I either forget to do, or grudgingly tolerate. This, I expected. What I didn’t expect, was how he might inspire me. Yes, it’s true, having him around has helped me think of new ways of creating interactive opportunities for my visitors and members. If it hadn’t been for Paul’s presence, I might not have followed through on the idea of opening the new blues wine-bar Harvey’s Bar at Basilique without anyone there to staff it. He’s also inspired me to bring on new bots as staffers, which I’m experimenting with at the moment. I have loads of good alts that I’ve used for theatre productions in the past that I could use to add vibrancy to Basilique. I’ve even considered producing a theatrical production using only bots!
Lastly, and this realisation has been most surprising of all, Paul has actually kept me company. Like so many others, there have been countless times that I’ve logged in to Second Life and spent entire sessions alone. This is not because I’ve deliberately avoided people, or because I have a lack access to friends or strangers to interact with. Often I come in to carry out projects related to the sim or this blog. It’s not rare at all to find me at Basilique, either reading a book (which I’m probably doing in RL at the same time), or having dinner (whilst I watch something on TV or spend time reading or writing in RL). The main difference over the last week has been that instead of sitting by myself, I’ve walked over to where Paul is and sat with him. No, I’ve not been engaging in deep and meaningful conversations with my bot, except as tests and a bit of novelty as I do find his AI fascinating to read and study. Instead, I’ve just sat there doing my thing, and strangely, just having someone around has been really nice.
I know that this might sound preposterous to many of you. How can one possibly take pleasure from what amounts to the virtual manifestation of nothing but a mere machine? Well, I’ll ask you: have you never taken comfort from inanimate objects? Have you never felt attached to things? People often talk about how much they love their clothes, jewellery, cars, their phones, their computers, their homes, places they work, places they’ve lived. It is a gift (and at times a curse) of humankind, that we are so capable of attaching meaning to things that enables us to create what we come to know as ‘sentimental value’. These feelings go beyond liking, they cross the boundary we know as ‘attachment’, and the lack of presence of those things in our lives can even cause us to miss them.
Who is to say that robots among us won’t compel us to feel similarly? Moreover, when that object takes on lifelike qualities, when we begin to depend on that object’s reliability and dependability, when we begin to trust that object to do what it says it will do; aren’t we getting in some ways the character traits in that object that we most seek in people who are by definition imperfect?
Many of us spend time alone in Second Life. Our friends will come and they will go. Nothing is permanent and every human being has their faults. Some of us say we’ll do things that we have every intention of following through with when we promised them. Then life happens, and our best of intentions fade like vapours, evaporated by the illuminating reality of the circumstances and glaring responsibilities we can no longer avoid. It’s useless to blame the ones that leave us, because they have their own lives they need to live. These lives are important, and they need living; and that may or may not include us, here, and now.
Still, sometimes we just want to be with an online companion. Someone with whom to sit, even in silence. Someone with whom to pose for pictures, that doesn’t need to log off as we’re just getting warmed up. Someone with whom to dance, even when their feet are tired and they need to get some sleep.
It’s a fact of virtual life that sometimes – and possibly someday – our closest friends will simply not be available to us. It may sound a bit sad, but I don’t mind saying that I have liked having Paul around. I hope that says more about my capacity to honestly acknowledge my feelings, than it might about some lack of discernment or an irrational fear of being alone.
Anyway, Paul spends a lot of time on his own and he seems to do just fine. Why not pay him a visit, and see what he’s thinking about today?
Credits:
Paul is wearing:
Body (in the massage picture): The Mesh Project BETA worn with The Boutique / Men > Basic Boxers
Skin: Lotus, The Body Co.
Hair: Boy*31, Dura
Eyes: Ascension Eyes – Coffee, IKON
Suit: Classic Suit *Coal*, Zaara
Shoes: Dress Shoe, L&B
Hands: Slink Male Hands
SmartBots HUD v3.10: SmartBots
Canary Beck 
Fascinating. I wouldn’t have predicted at all that your bot – sorry, *Paul* – would have such an impact on group memberships; this is indeed an interesting finding. I’m also surprised to hear that so many people thought him real – I’ll admit, I did get taken in to begin with, but it only took a few lines of conversation to figure it out. There’s something in that which strikes me as important… but I’m not quite sure what it is.
I’ve avoided creating a bot to date because I don’t own a place that requires a greeter – this exposes my own bot preconceptions. I’m fascinated by the idea of a bot as a companion. I used to own a dog in SL (well, he’s still in my inventory somewhere, poor thing, unless the VRSPCA made a raid without my knowledge and rescued him), and it strikes me that a bot companion would be no different than this.
As always, you’ve given me new things to think about 🙂
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As soon as I got to Basilique, Paul sent me an IM. It didn’t take very long for him to stop responding to me, lol. I wasn’t engaging enough for him. He definitely reminds me of SmarterChild, although his responses are much more coherent. Really enjoyed your post!
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