Richard Garriott (left) talks about AI sapience with Richard Bartle.
Richard Garriott (left) talks about AI sapience with Richard Bartle.
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Richard Bartle and Richard Garriott: How humans should treat advanced AI characters

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 7 min

Pretty soon, we might all be the new citizens of the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. And if we’re going to do this right, it would be good to get some expert advice on the ethics around the metaverse.

One of the big issues that will come up — based on a conversation between gaming legends Richard Garriott de Cayeux, creator of the Ultima series, and Richard Bartle, the University of Essex professor who did seminal research on online games — is how to treat characters who have artificial intelligence.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.