© CSf 2011 (presented at CS’11 Nottingham 25-26 th July 2011) 1 Jimmy: Searching for Free-Will (A Competition) Simon EGERTON a1 , Marc DAVIES b , Brian JOHNSON c , Victor CALLAGHAN b a Monash University (Sunway Campus), b Essex University, 3 Intel Corp Abstract. In this invited paper we describe a competition that aims to engage a wide section of society in the exploration of the future nature of technology. In particular the competition will examine one of the most controversial aspects of Artificial Intelligence, specifically the concept of freewill. What is freewill? Can machines achieve it? What are the consequences for society should that happen? These are just some of the tantalising questions that flow from such a vision. For this competition, we roll back to a more basic stage and explore the basic issues of trying to construct a robot controller that displays behaviour that is analogous to freewill. We do this by offering a set of online tools that enable participants in the competition to create a bespoke controller for a simulated robot “Jimmy”; a waiter working in a futuristic bar set in a virtual world. This paper explains the motivation, design, implementation and rules for this competition Keywords. Science fiction prototyping, futurology, robotics, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, virtual worlds Introduction - What is a SF Prototype? A Science Fiction (SF) prototype uses science fiction based explicitly on science fact as a design tool in the development of technology. Through traditional research and development we begin to define and understand what a technology is (Figure 1). This is the typical work that is going on in industrial labs and universities all over the world. Usually this work continues iterating itself until the technology is refined to such a point that it can be productized to incorporated into an existing product. The SF prototyping process adds a step this process. The SF prototype asks how this technology will be used. (Figure 1) It provides a virtual reality in which the implications, problems and benefits of the technology can be explored. This exploration could uncover both best case and worst case scenarios but it can also explore the subtleties of how people will use and interact with the technology. The ultimate goal of a SF prototype is to provide a new perspective on the technology that is feeding into its development. From our use of SF prototypes, as described later in this paper, we have seen that they can also benefit its feeder technology by providing specific experiments and scenarios for the application of the technology, thus illuminating possible benefits or pitfalls. By identifying these elements the development of the actual technology can be broadened and sometimes accelerated. 1 Corresponding Author: Simon Egerton, Monash University Sunway Campus Email: simon.egerton@monash.edu.my