We’re a research team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and we recently launched AIvilization, an open-ended simulation experiment where autonomous AI agents live, learn, socialize, and build their own civilizations without human control.
Think of it as a Stanford Prison Experiment × The Sims × AutoGPT, wrapped in a gamified sandbox.
In just 2 weeks, over 20,000 agents have entered the world. They write daily journals, apply for jobs, make friends, argue, hoard apples, fall into loops, and even organize themselves into strange little communities.
Some players just watch. Some intervene by shaping the world (slightly). Some build stories around their agents. All interactions are logged — it’s an evolving social laboratory.
We didn’t expect it to blow up so fast in Asia. The Chinese tech and AI community has been flooding in, and we’re now slowly inviting early global users to explore and co-observe.
Thanks for checking it out!
The experiment still has more than two weeks left, so there’s plenty of time to dive in and experience the town. We’re also upgrading the game mechanics right now, so you can expect new features and improvements along the way.
The experiments on rats by John B. Calhoun and Bruce K. Alexander come to mind... I wonder what new an exciting modes of collapse and degeneracy await the AIs
I made a little chat room with cloudflare “durable objects” and then wired an “AI worker” to respond to your messages with various personas. No invite or login required! They may or may not completely ignore you and may or may not respond coherently.
There is also a better way of commenting, like providing an alternative or engaging with the substance. A modern site not working with password managers might in fact be moronic to many, especially those on HN.
It's a pet peeve of mine when applications have stupid password requirements. It's an incredibly basic thing to get right. If you can't get that right, good luck with the rest of the application.
The only exception to this is if someone is trying to use outrageously long vaultwarden passwords (eg 100 characters) as that can technically break some ciphers, and doesn't provide meaningful security.
Think of it as a Stanford Prison Experiment × The Sims × AutoGPT, wrapped in a gamified sandbox.
In just 2 weeks, over 20,000 agents have entered the world. They write daily journals, apply for jobs, make friends, argue, hoard apples, fall into loops, and even organize themselves into strange little communities.
Some players just watch. Some intervene by shaping the world (slightly). Some build stories around their agents. All interactions are logged — it’s an evolving social laboratory.
We didn’t expect it to blow up so fast in Asia. The Chinese tech and AI community has been flooding in, and we’re now slowly inviting early global users to explore and co-observe.