# Project Sid: Many-agent simulations toward AI civilization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00114 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00114/

## Key facts

- Cited by 49 papers in the map (data through 14 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.

## Placed in

- World models / [World models for language agents](https://mlsanity.com/wm/world-models-for-language-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16291/) (2023)
- [MMMU: A Massive Multi-discipline Multimodal Understanding and Reasoning Benchmark for Expert AGI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16502/) (2023)
- [WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13854/) (2023)
- [CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17760/) (2023)
- [Mastering Diverse Domains through World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04104/) (2023)
- [GAIA: a benchmark for General AI Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12983/) (2023)
- [ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07924/) (2023)
- [DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03714/) (2023)
- [Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01680/) (2024)
- [ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07201/) (2023)
- [A Survey on the Memory Mechanism of Large Language Model based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13501/) (2024)
- [MineDojo: Building Open-Ended Embodied Agents with Internet-Scale Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08853/) (2022)
- [Understanding the planning of LLM agents: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02716/) (2024)
- [Video PreTraining (VPT): Learning to Act by Watching Unlabeled Online Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11795/) (2022)
- [MedAgents: Large Language Models as Collaborators for Zero-shot Medical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10537/) (2023)
- [Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.04024/) (2022)
- [Exploring Large Language Models for Communication Games: An Empirical Study on Werewolf](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04658/) (2023)
- [Building Cooperative Embodied Agents Modularly with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02485/) (2023)
- [S3: Social-network Simulation System with Large Language Model-Empowered Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14984/) (2023)
- [Exploring Collaboration Mechanisms for LLM Agents: A Social Psychology View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02124/) (2023)
- [MineRL: A Large-Scale Dataset of Minecraft Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.13440/) (2019)
- [Agent Q: Advanced Reasoning and Learning for Autonomous AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07199/) (2024)
- [EconAgent: Large Language Model-Empowered Agents for Simulating Macroeconomic Activities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10436/) (2023)
- [Knowledge Graph Prompting for Multi-Document Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11730/) (2023)
- [War and Peace (WarAgent): Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Simulation of World Wars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17227/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [Agent Laboratory: Using LLM Agents as Research Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04227/) (2025)
- [AgentSociety: Large-Scale Simulation of LLM-Driven Generative Agents Advances Understanding of Human Behaviors and Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08691/) (2025)
- [Understanding World or Predicting Future? A Comprehensive Survey of World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14499/) (2024)
- [Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01990/) (2025)
- [LLM Generated Persona is a Promise with a Catch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16527/) (2025)
- [Do Large Language Models Solve the Problems of Agent-Based Modeling? A Critical Review of Generative Social Simulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03274/) (2025)
- ["Humans welcome to observe": A First Look at the Agent Social Network Moltbook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10127/) (2026)
- [LLM Economist: Large Population Models and Mechanism Design in Multi-Agent Generative Simulacra](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15815/) (2025)
- [Toward LLM-Agent-Based Modeling of Transportation Systems: A Conceptual Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06681/) (2024)
- [Does Socialization Emerge in AI Agent Society? A Case Study of Moltbook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14299/) (2026)
- [Agentic World Modeling: Foundations, Capabilities, Laws, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22748/) (2026)
- [BookWorld: From Novels to Interactive Agent Societies for Creative Story Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14538/) (2025)
- [MoltNet: Understanding Social Behavior of AI Agents in the Agent-Native MoltBook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13458/) (2026)
- [The Hidden Strength of Disagreement: Unraveling the Consensus-Diversity Tradeoff in Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16565/) (2025)
- [Benchmarking LLMs' Swarm intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04364/) (2025)
- [The Five Ws of Multi-Agent Communication: Who Talks to Whom, When, What, and Why -- A Survey from MARL to Emergent Language and LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11583/) (2026)
- [Emergent Social Dynamics of LLM Agents in the El Farol Bar Problem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.04537/) (2025)
- [Visual Language Models as Operator Agents in the Space Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07802/) (2025)
- [The Philosophical Foundations of Growing AI Like A Child](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10742/) (2025)
- [Batch Query Processing and Optimization for Agentic Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02121/) (2025)
- [Implicit Behavioral Alignment of Language Agents in High-Stakes Crowd Simulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16457/) (2025)
- [Emergence World: A Platform for Evaluating Long-Horizon Multi-Agent Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08367/) (2026)
- [Mind Viruses: Self-Propagating Ideas in Multi-Agent LLM Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10218/) (2026)
- [SwarmWorld: Stigmergic technological evolution in societies of language-model agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26081/) (2026)
- [RepoTransAgent: Multi-Agent LLM Framework for Repository-Aware Code Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17720/) (2025)
- [AIvilization v0: Toward Large-Scale Artificial Social Simulation with a Unified Agent Architecture and Adaptive Agent Profiles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10429/) (2026)
- [AgentCity: Constitutional Governance for Autonomous Agent Economies via Separation of Power](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07007/) (2026)
- [AI for Games in the Foundation Model Era](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.16679/) (2026)
- [A Concurrent Modular Agent: Framework for Autonomous LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19042/) (2025)
- [Shall We Play a Game? Language Models for Open-ended Wargames](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17192/) (2025)

## 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.