An LA Weekly article describes research at the USC Intelligent Agents and Multiagent Systems program into the military applications of virtual minds. These virtual minds simulate qualities of the human mind and could be used for training soldiers or even in real world applications that require human-like decision making capabilities. The researchers, Stacy Marsella and David V. Pynadath, hope to go beyond mere simulations to create machines with the emotional and intellectual equal of human minds. In an interesting link to yesterday's story on religion, the author notes that both researchers admit that creating intelligent machines makes them feel like they're playing God.