mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Project Sid: Many-agent simulations toward AI civilization

arXiv 2411.00114 ↗First posted 31 Oct 2024cs.AI cs.MAcited by 46

On the map: World models → World models for language agents

Abstract (arXiv)

AI agents have been evaluated in isolation or within small groups, where interactions remain limited in scope and complexity. Large-scale simulations involving many autonomous agents -- reflecting the full spectrum of civilizational processes -- have yet to be explored. Here, we demonstrate how 10 - 1000+ AI agents behave and progress within agent societies. We first introduce the PIANO (Parallel Information Aggregation via Neural Orchestration) architecture, which enables agents to interact with humans and other agents in real-time while maintaining coherence across multiple output streams. We then evaluate agent performance in agent simulations using civilizational benchmarks inspired by human history. These simulations, set within a Minecraft environment, reveal that agents are capable of meaningful progress -- autonomously developing specialized roles, adhering to and changing collective rules, and engaging in cultural and religious transmission. These preliminary results show that agents can achieve significant milestones towards AI civilizations, opening new avenues for large simulations, agentic organizational intelligence, and integrating AI into human civilizations.

Key facts. Cited by 46 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in World models for language agents, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 48 of its 63 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 Oct 2024.

Builds on

48 of 63 references.

Closest ancestors · 7

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024A Survey on the Memory Mechanism of Large Language Model based Agents21 Apr
  2. 2023EconAgent: Large Language Model-Empowered Agents for Simulating Macroeconomic Activities16 Oct
  3. 2023Exploring Collaboration Mechanisms for LLM Agents: A Social Psychology View3 Oct
  4. 2023Exploring Large Language Models for Communication Games: An Empirical Study on Werewolf9 Sep
  5. 2023S3: Social-network Simulation System with Large Language Model-Empowered Agents27 Jul
  6. 2023Do Embodied Agents Dream of Pixelated Sheep: Embodied Decision Making using Language Guided World Modelling28 Jan
  7. 2022MineDojo: Building Open-Ended Embodied Agents with Internet-Scale Knowledge17 Jun

Other references · 41

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  3. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  4. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
  5. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
  6. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  7. 2023MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGIcited by 2,044
  8. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 1,908
  9. 2023CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Societycited by 1,348
  10. 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Modelscited by 1,193
  11. 2023GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistantscited by 1,084
  12. 2023ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Developmentcited by 893
29 more
  1. 2023DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelinescited by 803
  2. 2024Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challengescited by 752
  3. 2023ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debatecited by 724
  4. 2024Understanding the planning of LLM agents: A surveycited by 414
  5. 2022Video PreTraining (VPT): Learning to Act by Watching Unlabeled Online Videoscited by 338
  6. 2023MedAgents: Large Language Models as Collaborators for Zero-shot Medical Reasoningcited by 311
  7. 2022Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systemscited by 300
  8. 2023Building Cooperative Embodied Agents Modularly with Large Language Modelscited by 231
  9. 2019MineRL: A Large-Scale Dataset of Minecraft Demonstrationscited by 210
  10. 2024Agent Q: Advanced Reasoning and Learning for Autonomous AI Agentscited by 201
  11. 2023Knowledge Graph Prompting for Multi-Document Question Answeringcited by 150
  12. 2023War and Peace (WarAgent): Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Simulation of World Warscited by 143
  13. 2023Theory of Mind for Multi-Agent Collaboration via Large Language Modelscited by 129
  14. 2024WebCanvas: Benchmarking Web Agents in Online Environmentscited by 119
  15. 2024A Survey on Large Language Model-Based Game Agentscited by 106
  16. 2024Large Multimodal Agents: A Surveycited by 99
  17. 2024SciAgents: Automating scientific discovery through multi-agent intelligent graph reasoningcited by 90
  18. 2023MindAgent: Emergent Gaming Interactioncited by 87
  19. 2024Self-Organized Agents: A LLM Multi-Agent Framework toward Ultra Large-Scale Code Generation and Optimizationcited by 84
  20. 2024Language Agents as Optimizable Graphscited by 81
  21. 2023CompeteAI: Understanding the Competition Dynamics in Large Language Model-based Agentscited by 65
  22. 2023Lyfe Agents: Generative agents for low-cost real-time social interactionscited by 49
  23. 2024VillagerAgent: A Graph-Based Multi-Agent Framework for Coordinating Complex Task Dependencies in Minecraftcited by 34
  24. 2024BattleAgentBench: A Benchmark for Evaluating Cooperation and Competition Capabilities of Language Models in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 26
  25. 2023The SocialAI School: Insights from Developmental Psychology Towards Artificial Socio-Cultural Agentscited by 24
  26. 2024S-Agents: Self-organizing Agents in Open-ended Environmentscited by 22
  27. 2023Simulating Public Administration Crisis: A Novel Generative Agent-Based Simulation System to Lower Technology Barriers in Social Science Researchcited by 21
  28. 2020The Variational Bandwidth Bottleneck: Stochastic Evaluation on an Information Budgetcited by 13
  29. 2024COMMA: A Communicative Multimodal Multi-Agent Benchmarkcited by 12

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 2; 2025: 24; 2026: 20.

46 papers.

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  1. 2025Agent Laboratory: Using LLM Agents as Research Assistantscited by 405
  2. 2025AgentSociety: Large-Scale Simulation of LLM-Driven Generative Agents Advances Understanding of Human Behaviors and Societycited by 180
  3. 2024Understanding World or Predicting Future? A Comprehensive Survey of World Modelscited by 161
  4. 2025Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systemscited by 125
  5. 2025LLM Generated Persona is a Promise with a Catchcited by 77
  6. 2025Do Large Language Models Solve the Problems of Agent-Based Modeling? A Critical Review of Generative Social Simulationscited by 28
  7. 2026"Humans welcome to observe": A First Look at the Agent Social Network Moltbookcited by 25
  8. 2025LLM Economist: Large Population Models and Mechanism Design in Multi-Agent Generative Simulacracited by 20
  9. 2024Toward LLM-Agent-Based Modeling of Transportation Systems: A Conceptual Frameworkcited by 19
  10. 2026Does Socialization Emerge in AI Agent Society? A Case Study of Moltbookcited by 13
  11. 2025BookWorld: From Novels to Interactive Agent Societies for Creative Story Generationcited by 12
  12. 2026MoltNet: Understanding Social Behavior of AI Agents in the Agent-Native MoltBookcited by 12
34 more
  1. 2025The Hidden Strength of Disagreement: Unraveling the Consensus-Diversity Tradeoff in Adaptive Multi-Agent Systemscited by 11
  2. 2026The Five Ws of Multi-Agent Communication: Who Talks to Whom, When, What, and Why -- A Survey from MARL to Emergent Language and LLMscited by 10
  3. 2026Agentic World Modeling: Foundations, Capabilities, Laws, and Beyondcited by 10
  4. 2025Benchmarking LLMs' Swarm intelligencecited by 8
  5. 2025Emergent Social Dynamics of LLM Agents in the El Farol Bar Problemcited by 7
  6. 2025Visual Language Models as Operator Agents in the Space Domaincited by 6
  7. 2025The Philosophical Foundations of Growing AI Like A Childcited by 6
  8. 2025Batch Query Processing and Optimization for Agentic Workflowscited by 6
  9. 2025RepoTransAgent: Multi-Agent LLM Framework for Repository-Aware Code Translationcited by 3
  10. 2025Implicit Behavioral Alignment of Language Agents in High-Stakes Crowd Simulationscited by 3
  11. 2026AIvilization v0: Toward Large-Scale Artificial Social Simulation with a Unified Agent Architecture and Adaptive Agent Profilescited by 3
  12. 2026Emergence World: A Platform for Evaluating Long-Horizon Multi-Agent Autonomycited by 3
  13. 2026Mind Viruses: Self-Propagating Ideas in Multi-Agent LLM Systemscited by 3
  14. 2026SwarmWorld: Stigmergic technological evolution in societies of language-model agentscited by 3
  15. 2025A Concurrent Modular Agent: Framework for Autonomous LLM Agentscited by 2
  16. 2025Empowering Real-World: A Survey on the Technology, Practice, and Evaluation of LLM-driven Industry Agentscited by 2
  17. 2026ScaleSim: Serving Large-Scale Multi-Agent Simulation with Invocation Distance-Based Memory Managementcited by 2
  18. 2026AI for Games in the Foundation Model Eracited by 2
  19. 2025Attention Mechanism for LLM-based Agents Dynamic Diffusion under Information Asymmetrycited by 1
  20. 2025BeliefNest: A Joint Action Simulator for Embodied Agents with Theory of Mindcited by 1
  21. 2025Personalized Constitutionally-Aligned Agentic Superego: Secure AI Behavior Aligned to Diverse Human Valuescited by 1
  22. 2025Shall We Play a Game? Language Models for Open-ended Wargamescited by 1
  23. 2026Interaction Theater: A case of LLM Agents Interacting at Scalecited by 1
  24. 2026An Alternative Trajectory for Generative AIcited by 1
  25. 2026Superminds Test: Actively Evaluating Collective Intelligence of Agent Society via Probing Agentscited by 1
  26. 2026Agentopia: Long-Term Life Simulation and Learning in Agent Societiescited by 1
  27. 2025Artificial Utopia: Simulation and Intelligent Agents for a Democratised Futurecited by 0
  28. 2025Polymorphic Combinatorial Frameworks (PCF): Guiding the Design of Mathematically-Grounded, Adaptive AI Agentscited by 0
  29. 2025Plantbot: Integrating Plant and Robot through LLM Modular Agent Networkscited by 0
  30. 2026Mechanism Plausibility in Generative Agent-Based Modelingcited by 0
  31. 2026What Spatial Memory Must Store: Occlusion as the Test for Language-Agent Memorycited by 0
  32. 2026OpenLife: Toward Open-World Artificial Life with Autonomous LLM Agentscited by 0
  33. 2026How Affect Propagates among LLM Agents: Emergent Emotional Contagion in Crowd Simulationcited by 0
  34. 2026Emergence World: Adversarial Stress-Testing of Long-Horizon Multi-Agent Systemscited by 0

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  1. 2024MineLand: Simulating Large-Scale Multi-Agent Interactions with Limited Multimodal Senses and Physical Needs
  2. 2025Static Sandboxes Are Inadequate: Modeling Societal Complexity Requires Open-Ended Co-Evolution in LLM-Based Multi-Agent Simulations
  3. 2024JaxLife: An Open-Ended Agentic Simulator
  4. 2025The Collaboration Gap: Exploration and Benchmarking of Open-World Agentic Cooperation
  5. 2026Toward Human-Centered Multi-Agent Systems: Integrating Cognition, Culture, Values, and Cooperation in AI Agents
  6. 2026CivBench: A Long-Horizon Benchmark for Tool-Mediated Agents in Civilization VI
  7. 2024Position Paper: Agent AI Towards a Holistic Intelligence
  8. 2026Atria Dawn: The Dawn of Agentic Superintelligence