Essay: Virtual Worlds

The submissions covered a wide range of issues and highlighted the importance of the environment: an agent never exists for itself but is also always part of its surroundings, and intelligent agents cannot be developed without the right environment. In addition, the relationship between agents is important - not only in regard to communication but also for transferring knowledge (culture), achieving goals that cannot be reached alone, and developing larger structures that are beneficial for the development and survival of agents.

Environments for artificial agents need to take into consideration the aspects crucial for living in a human environment. However, they also require their own specific aspects, as they differ greatly from us humans. Only by combining both considerations will we achieve the successful emergence of intelligent agents in virtual worlds.