"A new society was forming in the blocky landscapes of the video game Minecraft. Its citizens built farms and markets, traded resources using emeralds as currency, and even developed forms of governance and religion. Some took on roles as leaders, others as priests, and a few became corrupt, bribing their peers for influence.
This community worried about missing members, collaborated to light paths back home and even persuaded a restless farmer to keep feeding the group rather than run off on adventures. To any observer, it might have looked like a quirky, self-organising human collective.
But this wasn't a real collective. And the people playing weren't human, or even alive. The residents were a thousand artificial intelligence (AI) agents, unleashed by a company called Fundamental Research Labs (FRL), known at the time as Altera AI."
sciencefocus.com. |
