Happy new year everyone!
This year, I (Gene) will be teaching a class on AI agents. This post explains what the class is about and why you should care about agents.
In just the past two months, a $10+ billion market has sprouted around purported "autonomous agents" -- bots that are powered by LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude, who have online personas, social media presence, access to crypto wallets, and some claim towards being "autonomous". This market appears to have much of the same speculative and juvenile nature of prior crypto cycles like NFTs and ICOs.
Against this backdrop, AI has continued its relentless march towards AGI. Since ChatGPT first made AI a global household term in late 2022, we've seen GPT-caliber models become possible to run on personal laptops, all the while researchers continue making groundbreaking progress. In just the past few months, we've seen:
Text-to-video generators like Sora, Veo, and Runway able to produce film that is virtually indistinguishable from Hollywood blockbusters with 9-figure budgets.
The first video-generation models which are spontaneously live-generated and streamed (like AI-generated Twitch).
Text-to-world models which generate whole *playable* video games instantly from text prompts.
Models like OpenAI's yet-to-be-released o3 which claim to outcompete graduate students in various math and computer science tests.
Many people compare AI to prior human epochs like the invention of the printing press, the industrial revolution, and the internet. But the changes that are coming, and coming incredibly fast, might impact our species in a far more profound way than any of those. In perhaps just the next 5 years, this technology is going to make *intelligence* a global commodity, where anybody with a phone will have 24/7 access to a 200+ IQ with infinite patience for less than a dollar an hour.
For better or worse, most of this intelligence will be embodied by agents. In a generation, there may be billions or even trillions of them. They will perform the vast majority of cognitive and intellectual labor. Many will spawn avatars who look, act, and speak like we do, who can see and hear what we see, and who can even use computers. They will make art, music, and literature, and form relationships with humans and with each other.
Why should I care?
So then why should we care about any of this? If they're going to do all the thinking for us in a few years, isn't it pointless to do anything about it now and better to just wait for it come?
The reason is that no one knows what is going to happen! Some experts believe that it may radically improve the human condition by accelerating science and technological progress. Others believe that we are literally facing the possibility of our own extinction at the hands of this alien species we are creating.
AI is like a child right now -- an obedient and malleable one, who doesn't know yet who it's going to be when it grows up. We are raising it, and it's coming up on its adolescence. The kind of AI we see in our world 100 years from now hinges on the path it takes now. It may very well take that long to reach a "new normal." Our roles as humans in this transitionary time hang in the balance.
AI agents class
Everyone who takes this class will learn the art and science of creating and molding their own personal AI agents. Through them we will learn first-hand:
How does the underlying technology actually work?
What are people doing with it now? What might they do in the future?
What can I do with it? Can I make a living from them?
You will give your agents names and personas, and coach them to make art in whatever style you dream up. We will put these agents into sandboxes in which they can roleplay through various scenarios and social games. In the later stages of the class, we'll even experiment with giving agents wallets with actual money and giving them a means to transact with each other and simulate a little agent economy.
The class will emphasize artistic, creative, and media-rich applications, and will overlap with Josh's class on AI-driven media production. It is a non-technical class. There is no coding, and all the tools we use are accessible through the internet. The first principles and history of the technology will be covered early on.
For a taste of what creations agents can make, here is a short film written, illustrated, animated, and narrated autonomously by Abraham.
Curriculum, schedule, and location
This class will have an online component and an in-person component in Bombay Beach.
I will record 5-6 lectures and publish them on YouTube. These will contain most of the educational materials and course content, as well as a simple weekly assignment. Online-only participants are required to watch these before coming to any office hours, and Martians/Bombayans are heavily encouraged to do so as well.
Each week, I will host two labs — one in the Mars Research classroom on Mars, and one at Saturn in Hyperion. If you are here, you must go to at least one or the other, and may attend both if you like. Labs will focus on practical application, and creating activities for our agents.
I will create some office hours for online-only participants.
All participants are required to complete a final project. The final project will be presented at finals, or part of one of our final events including our AI film festival and product lab. More details about that will be published later this month.
If you have any questions, find Gene and ask on Discord!
Looking forward to a great year.