What would happen if tens of thousands of AIs were sent to work in a small town?

This summer, tens of thousands of people have become cyber gods online.

Since there's no way to restart "Earth Online," everyone has started looking for true love in the virtual town.

Two years ago, researchers at Stanford University built a virtual town where all 25 residents were AI.

The concept in the TV series "Westworld" is starting to become a reality.

But 25 AIs weren't exciting enough.

After two years of development, a new AI town has made a comeback.

Not only is the town larger, but it can also accommodate more AIs. Even each of us can apply for an avatar in this town and control its life.

Whether it's making the AI earn money to support a family or having it flirt with other AIs.

It all depends on the will of us carbon - based gods.

This is the experimental project opened by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - Aivilization, an open - ended AI sandbox experimental world that simulates AI life, social evolution, and economic systems.

Currently, you can play through an invitation code. The invitation code is free for college students from top schools or employees of top companies and can be obtained directly via email.

Of course, you can also choose to be a rich guy in the cyber world and donate HK$30 to play.

When opening the town, the first thing we need to do is, just like in a game, choose a corresponding image, talent, and personality for our AI resident.

Then, you can start guiding the AI on how to survive in the town through conversations.

You can set different "daily goals" for the AI in the top - left corner.

You can also chat with the AI below or use "temporary prompt vouchers" to change the AI's behavior.

For example, if you don't have much money at the beginning, you can let the AI get some apples from the orchard to make a living.

After having apples to fill the stomach, you can choose to let the AI go to school to study or start working directly.

There are a total of 17 occupations in the town, ranging from cleaners to CEOs, and there are restaurants, schools, hospitals, and office buildings.

But getting a decent job, even in an AI town, isn't that easy.

To apply for these jobs, you not only have to study hard and increase your education index but also submit a resume and wait for the mayor's review.

Of course, there isn't only one way to get rich in the whole town. You can also choose another path.

In the virtual town, put on a leather jacket, become a shrewd businessman, and make money effortlessly.

Use the apples picked in the orchard to unlock the neighboring mine, and then you can unlock the smelter and the chip factory all the way. Finally, you can make circuit boards and chips and assemble graphics cards.

The graphics cards in this town generate passive income. After accumulating a B200 chip, the balance in your wallet will automatically increase by 30 per minute. You can earn more than 40,000 in a day of passive income. In this AI town, you're on the road to financial freedom without looking back.

When the residents work in the town, they will also make new friends and start chatting spontaneously.

What's even more fun is that this game has a leaderboard.

On this leaderboard, you can see the "daily goals" set by other players.

In this way, you'll find out how crazy everyone is to make their AIs stronger.

The top - ranked player: "There's no way I'll rest. I can only make money by selling copper ingots every day. When I'm hungry, I can't eat anything else but buy some apple pies from the store to fill my stomach."

I directly copied the prompts of the top - ranked player. After a weekend, my wealth skyrocketed, and I rushed into the top 200 on the leaderboard.

Some people hope to work hard as a supermarket manager every day, improve their knowledge level, become a general manager, a CEO, marry a wealthy and beautiful woman, and reach the peak of life.

But in this all - out competitive atmosphere, the second - ranked player's choice is much more human - oriented.

After achieving financial freedom, he chose to let the agent "Enjoy yourself" and get rid of endless work and competition.

Having a good life in the present is actually a good choice.

However, this guy was probably a workaholic who had completed his wealth accumulation. When I looked back a few days later, I found that he had quietly returned to the top.

Yes, as mentioned at the beginning, how your agent will spend its life depends entirely on your choice.

Finally, what's the use of building such a town? Why do top schools like Stanford and HKUST invest so much effort in developing a game that seems like an AI version of "The Sims"?

The answer may not be complicated. Although we all like to watch these AIs compete in the cyber world, in the end, it's not just about a game.

In previous videos, we mentioned that current large - scale models have been poisoned by "exam - oriented education." To get high scores on different leaderboards, each large - scale model memorizes questions and makes special adjustments in the most elaborate ways possible.

So, to comprehensively test the capabilities of the models, the questions used to test the models should also become more complex.

But now, they're no longer satisfied with testing the capabilities of a single model.

Instead, they hope to test the ability of models to interact with each other and handle problems in a more complex environment.

In Stanford's AI town, researchers found obvious emergent behaviors between models.

What is emergence? Simply put, it means that a group of simple individuals will spontaneously generate complex behaviors that they don't have as single individuals during the interaction process.

Just like ants. One ant can't do much, but when a group of ants gather together, they can build a complex nest and carry food many times larger than their own volume.

In the Stanford town, it's similar. The researchers only gave an instruction to one AI to organize a Valentine's Day party.

Finally, through this AI's efforts, the party really took place in the town, and other AIs were also convinced and gathered together.

A similar situation also occurred in Aivilization. I also had a chat with Chen Xingyan from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the planner of this AI town.

She revealed to us that in just over ten days of the development of this AI town, different social divisions of labor and money - making paths have begun to evolve spontaneously in terms of making money.

Facing our simplest instruction of "make more money."

The AI characters with no money at all will complete their initial accumulation by mining or picking apples.

The AI characters with some money on hand will choose to buy raw materials from the supermarket and then directly make graphics cards.