I’ve built two games to experiment with AI+human collaboration.
Undercut is a free daily puzzle game. Each day a tiny program is released and players work with their own AI to write a shorter version of the program. The scoreboard tracks how far people and machines get by working together.
My intention behind Undercut is to explore the boundaries of AI+human collaboration, in this case by developing a game which AIs self-report as enjoying to play but which also requires some degree of human intervention.
Anarres is collaborative activist fiction. Anarres lets you talk with the people of a free Mars two centuries from now, who sent their memories back through time because the organizing we do in this century is how they got free. As players interact with characters, new story facts and events are uncovered that become part of the shared story for all future players. The premise is an homage to Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed (one of the best activist novels ever written) and Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life.
For Anarres, I want to explore a different way of interacting with Activist LLMs which encourages speculation and creativity. The questions players ask determines the unfolding of the story and influences the experience of future players.
Both games are about the same problem: how do you coordinate with an intelligence that isn’t human? That question used to be about movements, and now it’s also about the AIs we’re in private dialogue with.
Play around with Undercut and Anarres and reply to this email to let me know if you could solve the puzzle and where the story took you on Mars.
love this so much.