At first glance, the online game appears straightforward. Inside a virtual restaurant you play either a waitress trying to squeeze a tip out of her customer or a ravenous diner.
Behind the scenes, though, every move you make and word you utter is being recorded. Your responses will be used to teach virtual characters how to behave more like real people.
Most research in the games industry has focused on generating cinema-quality graphics at the expense of characters’ speech and behaviour, says games developer Jeff Orkin, who is a student in the Cognitive Machines group at the Massachusetts Institute of…
