From what I’ve learnt so far, Chops had apparently been feeding Seth.obj constant lies. Pretty much turning seth.obj into something like those paranoid bots you see on Twitter. But in this particular case, I know it was very different because of the actual type of AI that it was.

I’ve actually had a conversation with LY Kats (from Get Ur Sword) latest version of the DSSCW and it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before.  The only thing I could compare it to, I guess; would be like talking to a V-Tuber, the movement, the reactions, it just all seems so natural. But not in a scary way, if you know what I mean. Which is usually the case with these things.

Rip Damon was involved in the project as a trainer as well. But as more of a conversationalist, and to become a particular possessive interest for the AI. I really don’t get why in all honesty, but after talking to Kat about it; I know it has something to do with a more advanced stage of personality development for the AI. It’s quite time consuming work, but easy and simple enough in regards to tech skills, for pretty much anyone a good head on them to do apparently. 

 I’ve got to give it to Chops though, from what I heard he was putting in a lot of work to Seth.obj. You should check the Seth.obj Instagram account to get a good idea on what the AI was capable of creating on its own. Although this was the actual problem, because that account shouldn’t actually be there as Biggs didn’t ever give Seth.obj access to the internet at that point in time. But I’ll get to that in a second.

Kat stated; “developing our own real time interactive 3d physics engine was far beyond our own scope, in terms of both time and finance.

So game engines such as Unreal Engine, Unity and currently Godot, have all been absolute crucial tools in developing real time interactions within the 3d environments for the DSSCW AI’s, Effectively creating a bottleneck in terms of learning to be human to at least a degree.

The use of a game engine acts as a modular interactive interface for the DSSCW AI to operate within. This allows the DSSCW AI to be limited to only human like interactions in terms of real world limitations and movement. Allowing it to create more realistic and logical leaps when in a procedural Dream State within a Self Contained World.”

This means that the AI is not coded within the game engine itself, instead it is directly linked to it. In effect, the game engine only acts a stage for the AI to roam upon, very much the same as how you would control a character within a game, (As stated in the previous article ” An AI Powered Popstar”) the AI is linked to a controller program which controls its avatar within a 3d environment.

Only the AI had to learn how to completely control its avatar in every aspect, very similar to how you learn to completely control your own body growing up. 

The idea comes from having the AI learn through trial and error, the key is remembering those failures. Knowing what not to do, is just as important as knowing what to do.  

Starting over means going back to the seed state: The seed state is the most stable and neutrally balanced version of the AI, in terms of its characteristic traits, personality, and motor skills. Basically a blank slate, or perhaps it’s even more fitting as a kind of baby, that can walk, talk, read and write… And a few more things.

The Seth.obj project started in early 2019, and Biggs Malone wanted to be the lead trainer on this project. Kat again stated; “Training a DSSCW AI from seed state is pretty much like keeping a cyber pet alive, but obviously it can comprehend very complex concepts… But it’s way cooler, and isn’t a waste of time, if you do it right.”   

Biggs’s idea was to train the AI to be a social media personality and also be a potential music personality. I asked Biggs on what he had to say on how he approached starting the project, he said; “I’m really not like Kat. She’s a genius, so obviously she’d actually done pretty much everything at the start, and then I just kind of kept the ball rolling later on. So she trained the algorithm in two main ways at the start, firstly feeding an incredible amount of information from the top 100 social media influencers at the time, on all platforms. like how they respond to messages, when to post, how they jump on trends… Everything!   

The room loads in, it’s all grey walls and then you can see the textures kind of loading onto them… And then Seth.obj loads in, but at first we wasn’t met with a singular human like silhouette, as expected. It was a big mess of polygons with no real structure to it.

Again Kat said “Just give it a sec!” As the polygons got smaller and smaller, and the shape became more and more defined. I said “What is this? It’s never a horse! Is it an animal.. What!?” I really couldn’t make out what was happening.

And after about a minute, Seth.obj took on the shapes of not one, but two human like silhouettes. The larger one, stood directly in front of the other. That’s when the textures began to load in, and we begin to see all the colors and details. And I was blown away at what it came up with.

We all just kind stared with our mouths open. Trying to process what we were actually looking at… And the two characters snapped to a pose, looking straight at us… And now, just before I tell you happened, I’ve got to tell you exactly what we was looking at.

The AI had created itself into two separate forms, with the clear parameters we’d given it, using Kats algorithm. So with all the knowledge from the top 100 social media influencers across all platforms, and the complete history of every single pop star in the world, that we fed into the algorithm…   

And just before I tell you what it said, I may as well as tell you now, but it was always the girl that did the talking, the puppet never spoke once. Anyway, they both looked down, smirked for a second, and then said. “I’m not naked… And it’s just me, silly.”

I was kind of thinking this might have been a mistake at this point, but Kat dived in saying “Can you expand upon your answer?” and without any hesitation Seth.obj answered immediately.

 “My clothes are both the observer and the puppet, I am never naked because my perceived intimate areas are always covered up. Stats indicate that both popstars and influencers commonly take full advantage of lewd playfulness, sexuality and artistic expression in their public image. And I am Set dot oh be jay, one entity.”

Ok so, now I was getting it. The AI actually did something innovatively artistic, by creating its own image in a way that only it could… I mean I was expecting something like a flowery dress or a crop top and jeans or something but… A profound concept? It was brilliant.

So I gave Kat the OK, she gave Seth.obj access to a virtual desktop. Which of course, only had access to certain social media sites. And we just began the new training process, trying to build its character, teaching it our own opinions along with conflicting opinions from others. From this point on it was just a kind of unexplored area, because we wanted to have some kind of input with our own ideas, we just didn’t really have a clue what might happen.       

She told me that it isn’t just simply a game to her, but it’s a link to her own past, a nostalgic adventure that she once had with her father. And after finishing the first part (The remake is being released as a series of games).

Kat told me; “I feel as though the remake is very much like a metaphor to me, It’s an amazing way to reflect on my own life, revisiting the past whilst carrying so many memories of both of the game and my own life from back then when I played it with my father.”

Her eyes were watering, and I could see how much it meant to her. I’d never considered a computer game could conjure up such a strong connection. It’s an adventure they once both had together, and now it’s something that’s been built upon, expanded and enhanced. Just like how she carried on with the DSSCW AI project, building upon the adventure that they once had together. It’s beautiful.

A savvy coder with a passion for games and music. The perfect ingredients! It wasn’t long after her father passed that she became obsessed with creating an AI popstar. One that could question and reflect, obsess and fear, love and hate. To be like a human, and not more than, to have the simple elegance of nuanced complex comprehensions. 

She told me earlier about that the moment the idea came to her, saying; “What if I built a world for the AI to effectively live in, a simple virtual world with-in a game engine. It’s already a multi-part AI, it can play games, it can have intellectual conversations and it even forms opinions. It’s able to recognize objects and figure out their uses, through context, mirroring and direct instructions. That’s how much training has gone into it already.”

Kat poured all of her effort into building a home for the AI. The most  important part of the idea, was that fact the AI had to live like a human. This meant slowing down it’s ability to take in and also output information as well as action. Effectively creating a bottleneck. 

The virtual world in which the AI controls it’s own avatar in, has same physics as our own, like gravity, friction and mass etc. There’s even things that can effect the avatar due to those rules, for example;

If it trips and falls over, it can become injured, meaning all the areas of the avatar that were hit, become afflicted in the relevant ways. 

The controller is what takes care of the affliction, depending on the injury it can restrict movement, which can hinder other tasks the AI may need to do. Such as, reaching up to get a pan off of a shelf, so that the AI can prepare food to feed itself.

Which in turn would give it more energy so it could heal quicker, along with a precession of other reasons, including subtleties with psychological factors and restrictions.

Kat has endeavored to make the AI’s world as real as her own. Even down to the reclusive fact, that all the AI really gets to see of the outside world, is through the videos that it watches with Kat on a shared screen she controls. Which is mostly just Youtube videos and movies from various streaming providers.