AI towns are strange corners of the Internet that take advantage of the processing power of large language models like OpenAI's GPT-4 and Meta's new Llama 3 They are virtual worlds where AI-powered characters can live, chat with each other and even socialize

Developed by VC a16z on top of the Convex platform backend, AI Town is an always-active, Sims-like virtual world where characters are free to do whatever they want

Unlike Sims, which always give the impression of being the dumber of the AI and relying on pre-prepared instructions, AI Town residents have some degree of free will, engaging in conversations with each other, investigating the world they live in, and establishing relationships that affect their characters

Now, thanks to local versions of the Convex platform, the underlying code can be easily installed and run on a MacBook; by installing Meta's Llama 3 locally, each character can be moved and any When you click on a character, a self-developed biography is displayed, allowing you to see who you have talked to and what you have talked about

The virtual world builds on a research paper published by Google and Stanford, which used GPT-35 to simulate AI agents living in a small digital town based on prompts to bots

Each of these agents controls the mind of a character with a defined occupation and personality All were prompted by LLM Over time, the character interacts with the world and others, builds relationships, and evolves a personality

Venture capital firm a16z, a big investor in games, has begun paying special attention to the use of AI in both development and gameplay ai Town is designed as a showcase for interactive LLM characters and is available as open source It is open-sourced [In future "Sims" games, LLMs could control each Sim's decision-making, allowing them to talk to each other, grow, and reject your instructions

There are two ways to play AI Town First, you can visit the AI Town website, click on Interactions, and get started in a world that is already working for other worlds This is an easy way to get started, but relatively difficult to control the world

Another option is to run it on a local device It requires at least 16 GB of RAM and currently only works on Mac or Linux

To make this process even easier, Cocktail Peanut, the makers of PinokioComputer, have created a one-click installer for this game All the necessary code is installed and a link to start playing appears in your browser You can customize the world, set initial prompts, and watch it grow

As well as being a fun game, AI Town is a useful tool for LLM to demonstrate the power of AI agents, widely regarded as the next big leap in chat

Agents can book hotels for users, create calendar appointments, fire nuclear weapons (kidding - hopefully!) etc), allowing the AI to go out and perform tasks on its own