Artificial intelligence in learning

Once players learn what ANGELINA is, Michael Cook knows they’ll never be fooled. After being outed as an AI, the program’s creations can’t be mistaken for a human’s — and that’s what makes them compelling.

Cook, a researcher at Goldsmiths College and a PhD student from Imperial College London, started working on ANGELINA — short for “A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I’ve Named ANGELINA” — in 2010. The idea sparked from his desire to create games and Simon Colton’s artistic AI experiment, The Painting Fool.

Both projects are built on similar ideas. Where Colton hopes to one day have The Painting Fool taken seriously as an artist, Cook is developing ANGELINA to be a competent designer. That’s the challenge: to create a piece of software that can understand and interact with human culture.