[HN Gopher] Agentarium: Creating social simulations with AI Agents
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Agentarium: Creating social simulations with AI Agents
Author : Thytu
Score : 71 points
Date : 2024-12-27 10:46 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| tetris11 wrote:
| Looks fun, but also very OpenAI dependent -- similar to AI
| Town[0].
|
| I really want to play with these, I just don't have the tokens. I
| do have a decent graphics card though.
|
| 0:https://github.com/a16z-infra/ai-town
| Thytu wrote:
| Thanks for the interest! I use aisuite (cf link) to manage what
| LLMs to use. You should be able to switch from one provider to
| an other quite easily (even hugging-face if you want). I don't
| know if aisuite supports local LLMs tho, might be a good thing
| to check.
|
| aisuite : https://github.com/andrewyng/aisuite
| yard2010 wrote:
| Maybe fork it and add ollama support :)
| kivihiinlane wrote:
| Would be fun to have this for Civ AI rulers
| cjonas wrote:
| What makes the "agents". From what I can tell, they don't perform
| any external actions. I would call these chatbots...
| qqqult wrote:
| "AI agent" -> LLM with function calling
|
| is the new
|
| "AI" -> LLM
| petesergeant wrote:
| I don't (at very brief glance) see either agentic or workflow
| code there, I think it's up to the users of the library to
| bring their own agents?
|
| (this being the only sensible terminology definition I've seen
| for which has very definitely been a "fund my startup"
| marketing term until now:
| https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents)
| cjonas wrote:
| Ya, these are the definitions I'd use.
|
| While all "Agentic" system will likely use some form of
| function calling, not all function calling is "Agentic". Most
| implementations are more "Workflows" than "Agents".
| Xen9 wrote:
| Ypu would need mathematical theory of embedded agency to dig
| yourself up from the terminological hellhole.
| ratedgene wrote:
| can you point me to some materials that are easy to digest?
| sadboi31 wrote:
| Easy to digest to me is a matter of process plus order.
| Just because you can boof wine/ai and feel a greater high
| than if you just took a sip doesn't mean you should. I'd
| start by setting the table and throwing out your last meal.
| start over in the 60s and work forward.
|
| stafford beer on cybernetics (also worth mention, norbert
| weiner): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6orMfmorg
|
| Lots of other people start w/ other things but i'm a mgmt
| minded person so a social engineering + psychology +
| anthropology oriented lens has always been my anchor.
|
| My first real intro to math where everything clicked was w/
| primitive graph theory as it were 2000+ years ago. From
| there, algebra, geometry, trig, calc, etc# started
| clicking.
| Thytu wrote:
| By default the "agent" is pretty limited in actions (only
| talking / and thinking).
|
| Currently it's up to the user to add its own actions, you can
| find an example where I gave the agents access to ChatGPT (cf
| link)
|
| Obviously, some default actions will be added in the future :D
|
| link to example:
| https://github.com/Thytu/Agentarium/blob/main/examples/3_add...
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > What makes the "agents"
|
| As most people understand them, a lot of marketing and
| imagination. There's some fairly dense theory on the underlying
| concept that is probably inaccessible to someone without a math
| degree, and much of this research happened well after my
| academic days so I cannot comment on a deep level, but I'm
| extremely skeptical of its attempted implementation in the
| current market, particularly when language models are at the
| core of it. From what I understand, an agentic system can exist
| entirely without LLM's and all the rube-goldberg machinations
| behind giving it the appearance of working. However, this is
| the course that every single tech company has gone all in on,
| so we'll see how it goes. I suspect that LLM's will be
| discarded in favor of something much better in the mid to far
| future, but the fact that no one can currently say what that is
| or even would look like is a little bit concerning to me when
| the large bets are being made that it will just happen
| inevitably in more near-future timelines.
| deadbabe wrote:
| These "AI Agent" type toys seem neat for a little bit but then I
| quickly find them pointless.
|
| I've found myself more entertained by far simpler AI using
| complex behavior trees or utility AI mechanics. Their emergent
| behaviors are just as good at creating stories in my head for
| what is happening in their world, even if the characters don't
| engage in actual conversation. It seems the ability for chatbots
| to speak text naturally with each other is of little value unless
| you like to eavesdrop every single conversation in every
| interaction two characters have. You could accomplish the same
| results by just passing raw numeric values between two bots that
| ultimately change their internal mental states.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Can you give an example?
| deadbabe wrote:
| The Sims
| Thytu wrote:
| The goal isn't entertainment but practical simulation. I'm
| building tools to automate A/B testing, model marketing
| campaign responses, and optimize content - all by simulating
| human behavior at scale. Where behavior trees fall short,
| language models can capture nuanced user reactions that can't
| be reduced to simple metrics.
|
| (if I can make it realistic enough lol)
| deadbabe wrote:
| Why do you think modeling a bunch of LLM characters and
| watching their interactions is somehow going to yield a
| substantially better result than asking an LLM to output
| content specifically tailored for a particular audience?
|
| If the answer you seek can be observed by watching LLMs
| interact at scale, then the answer is already within the LLM
| model in the first place.
| Thytu wrote:
| I simply tested it, result are quite different tbh. Now the
| big question is "Why".
|
| My first thought would be that it's kinda we, humans,
| behave. It feels a bit the equivalent of the mom-test. If
| you ask someone "do you like this", he/she is bias to to
| say "yes", same goes for LLMs (I took a dummy example but
| you got the idea).
|
| Anyway, I can be wrong, I can be right, ATM no one knows
| not even me
| deadbabe wrote:
| I think what you're just doing there is averaging out the
| output of many LLMs, and it gives some different results,
| but there's no reason you couldn't arrive at those same
| results I think by just complicating the original prompt
| manually.
| binary132 wrote:
| All AI slop is nothing but market hype VC exploitation.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| How is this different than just using OpenAI's API? Sure, it's a
| slightly different interface, but what's the advantage? To me, an
| agential framework would have the agents interacting with the
| external world.
| vunderba wrote:
| It sounds very similar to AI town - there's been a couple
| attempts at building virtual playgrounds for chatbots to interact
| with each other, and vote on solutions if they're trying to come
| up with a consensus. In that respect, it's probably similar to
| how mixture of experts work but just modeled at a higher level.
|
| https://github.com/a16z-infra/ai-town
|
| The big thing that you want though is diversity in terms of each
| of the AI's, and I'm not convinced that altering temperature /
| system context prompt / optional backing RAG represents
| sufficient variety from virtual bot to virtual bot.
|
| Ideally, you would want to throw as many different LLMs (Llama,
| Mistral, Qwen, etc.) into the mix as possible, but hardware
| constraints make this borderline impossible.
| BrandiATMuhkuh wrote:
| This is really cool. I think agent based simulations with LLM are
| really cool. Just last week I was talking with a Professor of
| Economy about the use of such simulations for their research.
|
| Some background: For my PhD thesis, about 8 years ago, did I
| simulate how voice agents can influence humans. I did that with
| an agent based simulations. Before I did the simulation I
| gathered actually influence values by doing experiments with
| human participants.
|
| The limitations however were, I only had basically one dimensions
| of influence.
|
| With LLM, we can create all sort of actors. And play scenarios,
| like introducing a new legislation and see how different types of
| the population will react.
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