Left to their own devices, an army of AI characters didn’t just survive — they thrived. They developed in-game jobs, shared memes, voted on tax reforms and even spread a religion.
The experiment played out on the open-world gaming platform Minecraft, where up to 1000 software agents at a time used large language models to interact with one another. Given just a nudge through text prompting, they developed a remarkable range of personality traits, preferences and specialist roles, with no further inputs from their human creators.
The work, from AI startup Altera, is part of a broader field that wants to use simulated agents to model how human groups would react to new economic policies or other interventions. And its creators see it as an early step towards large-scale “AI civilizations” that can coexist and work alongside us in digital spaces. Read the full story.
—Niall Firth
To learn more about the intersection of AI and gaming, why not check out:
+ How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play. AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive. Read the full story.
+ What impact will AI have on video game development? It could make working conditions more bearable—or it could just put people out of work. Read the full story.
+ What happened when MIT Technology Review’s staff turned our colleague Niall into an AI-powered nonplayer character—and why he hated his digital incarnation so much.
MIT Technology Review Narrated: The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit