A thousand autonomous AI agents are all working in Minecraft to create their own economy, government and culture

AI startup Altera has launched the first-ever simulation of over 1,000 collaborating autonomous AI agents, working together in a Minecraft world, all of which can operate for hours or days without intervention from humans.

The agents have already started to develop their own economy, culture, religion, and government, with the AI already working on establishing its own systems.

The CEO Robert Yang took to X to share the news and introduce Project Sid.

Introducing Project Sid: the first simulations of 1000+ truly autonomous agents collaborating in a virtual world, w/ emergent economy, culture, religion, and government

Humans are the only species to land the moon, because we can cooperate at a vast scale

Can AI do the same? pic.twitter.com/bh2OHDJWU7

— Robert Yang (@GuangyuRobert) September 3, 2024

“Introducing Project Sid: the first simulations of 1000+ truly autonomous agents collaborating in a virtual world, w/ emergent economy, culture, religion, and government.

“Humans are the only species to land on the moon because we can operate at a vast scale. Can AI do the same?”

So far, the agents have already formed a merchant hub, have voted in a democracy, spread religions, and collected five times more distinct items than before.

The agents carry out tasks and develop their own world through a Minecraft server, but can use other apps and games too. In the market that was set up by the technology, the agents agreed with each other to use gems as a common currency for trading supplies.

“Though starting in games, we’re solving the deepest issues facing agents: coherence, multi-agent collaboration, and long-term progression,” said the CEO.

As technology has advanced, autonomous AI agents have been developed. This is an advanced form of artificial intelligence that harnesses the abilities of large language models, with the aim of being able to carry out tasks independently.

Some large companies have started to integrate autonomous AI agents into their operations, like Salesforce who use them for personalized interactions within customer service. IBM has also detailed on its website that the best use cases of the agents are for customer experience, healthcare, and emergency responses.

In the announcement thread by Altera’s CEO, he said AI “must be more autonomous” as humans can’t afford to micromanage.

“As AI agents become an integral part of our human civilization, they must effectively collaborate with each other and the rest of us.”

Project Sid is the first attempt by the company, with the CEO saying it has actually opened up more questions than it currently answers.

“(1) How can we meaningfully measure true long-term progression in a general way?

“(2) How to build agents that actually care about human growth?

“(3) How to build machines consciously aware of their actions and the consequences?

“(4) How far can we scale an AI civilization? Answering these questions requires research/engineering that go beyond the current paradigms.”

Featured Image: AI-Generated in MidJourney

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