Another great review, this time from Professor Richard Gilbert, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychology and New Technology Research Lab, at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California. Professor Gilbert staged one of the first covert Turing Tests in a virtual world which achieved a 78% deception rate.
David Burden and Maggi Savin-Baden’s Virtual Humans offers a thorough, research-based treatment of how digital entities with human-like features and capabilities have left the domain of science fiction and are rapidly becoming a major aspect of human culture. In their clearly-written and well-organized work, they describe the current forms and abilities of virtual humans (including smart speakers and virtual assistant systems like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana and various types of Internet-based chatbots); examine how the creation of virtual bodies, senses, and minds can be combined to create virtual humans; and consider potential developments in the nature and functionality of virtual agents across a range of timeframes from the end of the next decade to the end of the century. Significantly, the authors recognize and discuss the great ethical, moral and social implications of these technological developments which makes their work relevant and important for the social sciences and humanities as well as the domains of computing and information sciences. I certainly intend to use Virtual Humans as an assigned reading in the interdisciplinary courses I teach on the personal and social impact of leading-edge digital technologies.