Sakana AI’s God Simulator Is Brilliant

0:00 I love this work.

0:01 This comes from the Sakana AI lab in Tokyo,

0:05 and it feels like mad science in the best possible way.

0:09 I had an almost illegal amount of fun with it, and you can try it too right now.

0:14 Assuming we don’t crash this website,

0:16 which we sometimes do in a Scholarly Stampede.

0:20 Now this is wild- we are going to play God in a tiny digital universe.

0:27 Look, we have 5 AI species in a petri dish fighting for territory and…nothing.

0:34 Why is that?

0:36 Well, this world is brutal We made the threshold for survival sit too high.

0:42 The environment crushes them.

0:43 And we can run the simulation for as long as we want,

0:47 no luck- none of these species can get a foothold.

0:50 It’s a bit like the app store.

0:53 Thousands of new apps launch, almost none get traction,

0:56 and most disappear without a trace.

0:58 It is simply too difficult to stay alive.

1:01 AI wrapper companies?

1:03 Killer new social media apps?

1:06 Same deal.

1:07 Okay, enough of this.

1:08 Let’s be a good god.

1:11 Let’s make life a bit easier.

1:13 The market is be suddenly flooded with money for AI startups.

1:18 Have a crappy idea?

1:19 No demo?

1:20 No business model?

1:22 Great, here’s a billion dollars brother.

1:28 Let’s gooo!

1:30 So what happens?

1:32 Look!

1:33 Whoa!

1:34 Empires start to grow and grow…oh!

1:38 But too quickly!

1:41 These empires grow out of nothing quickly, and then crumble just as quickly.

1:46 Why?

1:47 Because the bar for survival is too low.

1:51 So we tighten the screws again.

1:54 Easy money dries up.

1:56 We get a tougher economy, and…look.

2:00 All these companies that got addicted to the easy money, suddenly disintegrate.

2:05 Gone.

2:06 And then…what happens?

2:08 Look!

2:09 New ones appear that are more adapted to this environment.

2:13 And as we start playing with some of these variables, we change the environment,

2:18 and can almost even create one ugly monopoly, or an unstable ecosystem.

2:25 I love this, this is so cool!

2:28 So how does this work?

2:30 Well, there are some basic rules.

2:33 The paper calls these species neural cellular automata.

2:36 This is a living, trainable pixel world inside a 2D grid.

2:41 It gets pretty involved, but here is the gist of it:

2:45 each organism competes for these pixels they can grow from nearby territory,

2:50 and must stay alive by local support.

2:53 But here is the key: they are constantly learning.

2:57 Oh, and they can also fight!

2:59 They specify which direction to attack in, and which direction to defend.

3:04 Kind of like having a sword and a shield pointed to a direction.

3:09 In the actual work, this happens in a higher dimension,

3:12 you see a simplification of that here.

3:15 When species meet at a border,

3:17 the system calculates which cell defeats which other one.

3:20 What I absolutely love about this work is

3:23 that whether we create a world of total chaos,

3:27 or a stable and healthy ecosystem.

3:29 It only depends on us.

3:32 Change the environment, and you change the winners.

3:36 It decides who rises, who falls, and who never gets a chance.

3:40 Nature works like this.

3:42 Markets work like this.

3:44 Everything works like this.

3:45 This really shows how important it is that we have good policy in a country too.

3:51 Most of the time, you let competition do its work and find the winners.

3:55 But sometimes, one tiny push makes the whole system healthier.

3:59 But it gets even more beautiful.

4:02 We talked about competition, but what about collaboration?

4:06 Is that also possible?

4:08 I thought of course not, because each organism has one single objective: grow.

4:15 This creates extreme competition, not collaboration, right?

4:19 Well, I was completely wrong.

4:22 Dear Fellow Scholars, this is Two Minute Papers with Dr.

4:25 Károly Zsolnai-Fehér.

4:26 Step number one.

4:27 They call it permissive mixing, I call it growth.

4:31 We create an environment that is very forgiving.

4:34 Digital species run wild and spread out everywhere.

4:39 Then they bump into each other constantly.

4:42 We get a big soup.

4:44 No firm borders.

4:45 Step number two.

4:47 Crystallization.

4:48 We raise the threshold a bit.

4:51 The rules get stricter.

4:53 To survive this harsh world,

4:55 species must group up into dense, solid shapes to stay alive.

5:00 Competition draws the borders.

5:02 Everyone finds out who can live next to whom.

5:06 Borders harden.

5:07 Then, step number three.

5:10 Relaxation.

5:10 We ease into a more forgiving market.

5:15 Now what?

5:16 Wow, this is amazing!

5:18 We get stripes, and little checkerboard patterns between these empires.

5:23 Why?

5:24 What happened?

5:25 Well, in the previous stage, weak border cells died immediately.

5:29 It creates borders like when two colors of paint

5:34 drying while there is a masking tape between them.

5:38 Colors separate.

5:39 Now, hold on to your papers Fellow Scholars,

5:45 because in stage three, we remove the masking tape.

5:51 What happens?

5:52 The edges break open.

5:54 They flow into each other, creating these little streaks.

5:59 Yup.

5:59 These empires are forced to coexist because the game

6:03 is unable to kill weak border cells so easily.

6:06 Both sides can keep tiny pieces of land at the edge,

6:10 instead of one side fully erasing the other.

6:13 Beautiful.

6:14 Simple.

6:14 Brilliant.

6:15 But this is also an incredible life lesson.

6:19 If you are always too loose, your life becomes a soup.

6:23 If you are always too strict, your life becomes a prison.

6:28 I am guilty of this too.

6:30 This is not the way.

6:31 Instead, start out loose, give yourself room to find your way.

6:36 Then, build discipline.

6:38 Harden up, find your shape.

6:40 Establish boundaries.

6:41 And finally, to not stay frozen forever, loosen up a bit.

6:47 Grow.

6:47 Adapt.

6:48 Let new things in.

6:52 Beautiful life advice in a beautiful paper.

6:54 Try it out for free in the video description, it is amazing.

6:58 What a time to be alive!

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