This Tiny Town Created by ChatGPT Is Better Than Reality TV

Anyone who has ever played The Sims can tell you: That game can get chaotic as hell. When left to their own devices, your Sims are liable to do anything from peeing themselves, to starving to death, to accidentally setting themselves (and their own children) on fire.

This level of “free will” as the video game calls it offers an amusing if somewhat unrealistic simulation of what someone might do if you just left them alone and observed them like an omniscient and uncaring god from a distance. As it turns out, it’s also the inspiration behind a new study simulating human behavior using ChatGPT.

A team of AI researchers at Google and Stanford University posted a study online on April 7 where they used OpenAI’s chatbot to create 25 “generative agents,” or unique personas with identities and goals, and placed them into a sandbox environment resembling a town called Smallville much like The Sims. The authors of the study (which hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet) observed the agents as they went about their days, going to work, talking with one another, and even planning activities.

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