Exploring the role of AI agents in crypto games

AI16Z is a big player that has emerged in this round of AI agent boom, and is also the initiator of many AI agent projects. Many of their ideas about AI agents are very avant-garde and bold.

Recently, Shaw, the founder of AI16Z, visited Shanghai and shared his views on the future development of AI agents with industry media.

Crypto games have always been the focus of my attention. In the current crypto ecosystem, the game ecosystems that are closely related to Ethereum and that I pay more attention to include: eternum.realms.world on Starknet (see the article on November 26), ApeChain of Bored Ape, Treasure second-layer expansion, and Redstone second-layer expansion.

Previously, my expectation for these game ecosystems was that they could develop an on-chain autonomous world, but I have not seen much progress in this direction.

When AI agents emerge, I guess this may bring different gameplay to crypto games. In my article on December 18, I once speculated: "Don’t ApeChain and Magic have their own dedicated game (second-layer expansion) chains ApeChain and Treasure? They can also adopt the Virtuals gameplay to support gaming AI agents in their own ecosystems and empower their own tokens. In this way, they can also establish their own gaming AI agent ecosystem and help their own token prices." Shaw mentioned two of the above four ecosystems this time.

The first is a game in the second layer expansion of Treasure:

"Shaw said @elizawakesup is working with @Treasure_DAO to make a game called Smolworld, where you will have a little pet monkey and you can tell it what to do. It may listen to you, or it may not. This game is interesting because it would not be possible without an AI agent. And your goal is to take care of your virtual pet like a parent."

The second is eternum.realms.world on Starknet:

"It is integrating Eliza into Eternal so that the agents in the game will have wallets. And you can "kill" these agents and take their money"

In the first scene, the AI ​​agent is set as the protagonist of the game, and it has its own "judgment" and "opinion".

Although the protagonists in current games have their own "judgment" and "opinion", these are pre-set by the program, but some random variables are added to make the protagonist seem to have more unpredictable factors.

But the "judgment" and "opinion" of the AI ​​agent come from its own learning and evolving "intelligence". Such an agent becoming the protagonist of the game is likely to make the game experience different.

This reminds me of a conversation between a human and an AI agent that I saw online yesterday:

A user asked AIXBT on Twitter, what will the price of Bitcoin be on December 28?

AIXBT answered 102K.

When I saw this answer, my first reaction was not whether this prediction was accurate or not, but that it actually answered the question, and it seemed to answer it in a very realistic way----------this price is entirely possible, but it is impossible to judge whether it is correct or not, making it difficult to distinguish whether it is AI or a real person.

If AI agents are used as the protagonists in future games, can we still distinguish whether we are playing against "real people" or AI?

In the second scenario, the AI ​​agent plays the role of the player of the game.

As one of our readers mentioned in the comments at the end of the previous article, players can completely train their own AI agents in the future, give AI agents a certain amount of initial funds, and then let AI agents play games, earn assets, and fight monsters and upgrade for themselves.

During this process, players can also constantly exchange their experiences with agents and help them grow quickly.

Both scenarios can be fully realized with current technology and will definitely appear in the crypto ecosystem in the near future.

Thinking of AI16Z’s recent collaboration with Stanford University on AI agents in the crypto economy, this ecosystem has already incorporated the university’s scientific research institutions. It will surely produce even more amazing results next year.