{
  "id": "d9b74ca6662b",
  "url": "https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/27/1107377/a-minecraft-town-of-ai-characters-made-friends-invented-jobs-and-spread-religion/",
  "title": "A Minecraft town of AI characters made friends, invented jobs, and spread religion | MIT Technology Review",
  "note": "Super interesting way to experiment with large scale AI \"agent\" interactions.\n\n> The team scaled up, pushing the number of agents in each simulation to the maximum the Minecraft server could handle without glitching—up to 1,000 at once in some cases. In one of Altera’s 500-agent simulations, they watched how the agents spontaneously came up with and then spread cultural memes (such as a fondness for pranking, or an interest in eco-related issues) among their fellow agents. The team also seeded a small group of agents to try to spread the (parody) religion Pastafarianism around different towns and rural areas that made up the in-game world, and watched as these Pastafarian priests converted many of the agents they interacted with. The converts went on to spread Pastafarianism (the word of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) to nearby towns in the game world.\n\nIt is incredible to me that some of the emergent things we see human society create happened here as well. ",
  "voice": "mixed",
  "saved": "2024-12-02T01:46:39Z",
  "host": "technologyreview.com",
  "kind": "page",
  "tags": [],
  "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/d9b74ca6662b/",
  "markdown": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/d9b74ca6662b.md",
  "issues": [
    {
      "number": 304,
      "slug": "304",
      "title": "Weekly Thing 304 / Connections, Vince, Markwhen",
      "date": "2024-12-08T12:00:00Z",
      "section": "Notable",
      "position": 1,
      "url": "https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/304/",
      "page": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/issues/304/"
    }
  ],
  "connections": {
    "same_host": {
      "count": 22,
      "page": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/technologyreview.com/",
      "nearest": [
        {
          "id": "e49d3518fa4a",
          "title": "What happened to microfinance company Kiva? | MIT Technology Review",
          "url": "https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/14/1077351/microfinance-money-making/",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/e49d3518fa4a/"
        },
        {
          "id": "4be8c4da5602",
          "title": "How to fix the internet | MIT Technology Review",
          "url": "https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/17/1081194/how-to-fix-the-internet-online-discourse/",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/4be8c4da5602/"
        },
        {
          "id": "65ce9ca7d13f",
          "title": "How AI assistants are already changing the way code gets made | MIT Technology Review",
          "url": "https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/06/1084457/ai-assistants-copilot-changing-code-software-development-github-openai/",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/65ce9ca7d13f/"
        },
        {
          "id": "2061b16cbf54",
          "title": "How Silicon Valley is disrupting democracy | MIT Technology Review",
          "url": "https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/13/1108459/book-review-silicon-valley-democracy-techlash-rob-lalka-venture-alchemists-marietje-schaake-tech-coup/",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/2061b16cbf54/"
        },
        {
          "id": "e5d5411d5dbd",
          "title": "We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. | MIT Technology Review",
          "url": "https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/e5d5411d5dbd/"
        }
      ]
    },
    "same_week": {
      "count": 17,
      "nearest": [
        {
          "id": "bc5ac0d74d56",
          "title": "Interview: The Real Costs of Free Search Engines | 1Password",
          "url": "https://blog.1password.com/real-cost-search-engines-interview/",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/bc5ac0d74d56/"
        },
        {
          "id": "c808328f9ccc",
          "title": "Why pipes sometimes get \"stuck\": buffering",
          "url": "https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/11/29/why-pipes-get-stuck-buffering/",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/c808328f9ccc/"
        },
        {
          "id": "98bc6639c7fc",
          "title": "vince - Self Hosted Alternative to Google Analytics",
          "url": "https://www.vinceanalytics.com/",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/98bc6639c7fc/"
        },
        {
          "id": "34d7b901eeea",
          "title": "‘By 8pm it is time to head home’: whatever happened to the big night out? | The Guardian",
          "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/nov/28/by-8pm-it-is-time-to-head-home-whatever-happened-to-the-big-night-out",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/34d7b901eeea/"
        },
        {
          "id": "f8eea1a18634",
          "title": "🎁 The Connections Puzzlemaker Welcomes Your Hate - The Atlantic",
          "url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2024/11/connections-wyna-liu-puzzles-controversial/680811/?gift=JqLCq8Z-iFN0jS3JACsQkMDRIehIr_fFOyZ5BSRZhGw",
          "record": "https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/f8eea1a18634/"
        }
      ]
    },
    "mentions": [],
    "mentioned_by": [],
    "saved_twice": []
  },
  "elsewhere": {
    "wayback": "https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/27/1107377/a-minecraft-town-of-ai-characters-made-friends-invented-jobs-and-spread-religion/"
  }
}