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Hello everyone,

I would be interested in discussing the possibility of using a Massively Multiplayer Online Game as a platform for testing competing AIs. One of the first mainstream games of this sort was a game called Ultima Online, which came out in the mid 90's. There is now a popular program available that allows individuals to emulate their own Ultima Online server. There are a number of such servers that can be played on for free. The source code for this server emulator is available. Also available is source code for a client. It would be interesting to create a server for the express purpose of testing multiple AI's in a competitive environment. The client could be modified to allow the AI's to efficiently plug in. This way, the AI's software runs on separate client machines, and the server functions only as a common ground for the AI's to compete within. The particular rules that the server implements could be kept confidential, so that the AI's must learn from experience how to manipulate their environment. In a setting like this, there could be some arbitrary measure of success, such as ability to hoard certain resources. Just for giggles, humans could still occasionally log on and interact with the AI's, or simply observe their behavior.

~Dana Ream