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Hacker News
Speaking of MUD, has anyone tried attaching an AI to the Hitchhikers MUD[1]?
[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN...
by Towaway69
I tried MUD a few times as a teenager, but for some reason I didn't like it. I prefered playing RPG on a long dead phpBB forum (LdC), and to this day I remember the very simple mechanic (for both players and gamemaster): an asterisk for character speech, and (#) for everything else.
A single post might look like this:
# By hearing those absurdities, memories rush to the mind
of Vicent Panclast — memories he'd like to avoid. He gets
physically agitated and raises his pistol high in the air.
* They shall not pass! We must do anything we can to stop
these mf nazis!!
I wonder what something like that could look like with the right use of AI, today. I'd like to think kids are exploring this kind of thing nowadays - I hope they are, because it's a ton of fun (even without AI, kids).
by gverrilla
I was a bit afraid that MUD was an acronym for something else, I clicked in about 10% hope that this will be for multi user dungeons and behold, thank you. Interesting read.
That brought back memories when we were trying to find free terminal in few departments at our uni to get access to one that has internet connectivity.
by krzyk
I am having a hell of a lot of fun letting agents play and understand a (still alive, human populated) MUD, which I have also played for the last 30 years.
It’s mostly my way to play with local llm inference (m5 64gb, gwen3.6 27).
It’s amazing. They build maps, classify events (building a grammar for a parser), run experiments (to verify the grammar). They are now (given the correct tools/infrastructure) trying to fine-train a 3b model for fighting (where you need a decision for 5 seconds rounds). Basically autonomously!
Overall, a MUD does prove a great constrained sandbox for them to play in.
What started as an experiment to test local inference landed in a sweet spot for seeing models strength/weaknesses/tradeoffs. And it’s really fun.
Only problem is that Claude gets really jealous when I ask him to code their po harness running local inference. Weird world.
by rufasterisco
> the measurements of each LLM
I think you have the correct idea.
If you ask an LLM to solve a multiplication problem using reasoning without code tools, depending on the model, it will get 15 digit (15D) * 15 digit multiplication correct (123456789012345 x 998765432109876). It will take between 4000 and 8000 tokens if Sonnet. Eventually with enough digits, it will start only solving the problem 80% ... then 70% of the time until it has so many digits it will never solve. There will be a certain number of digits where it will not converge on a solution nor will it stop working thinking it can solve it. That is very, very expensive. It takes a lot of runs to determine the probability it will solve it.
What you can do now, this is likely the most important thing, is change the prompt and evaluate how many tokens and at what speed it takes to accomplish the task. Sure the measurements of each LLM are important! Nonetheless, if you can say to a company that you have a technique to tune prompts and evaluate them so instead of spending $1 X 100,000 times a day, they can instead spend $0.90 X 100,000 times a day, you will make a ton of money.
by dataviz1000
A little irrelevant, but I need to vent about something MUD adjacent.
I really wish MUDs were still a thing. The text-based roleplaying communities were largely swallowed by Discord, where as before they existed scattered over proboards, jcink, and a few others.
Discord, being the imperfect text platform, limits the text and leaves most interaction limited by awkward formatting. To boot, even when a better ecosystem is invented, players refuse to give it a shot even if directly invited, because they got comfortable with Discord's terribleness.
It's so frustrating, and I don't know how to voice it, or even what can be done.
by Varelion
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- Hacker News
- Speaking of MUD, has anyone tried attaching an AI to the Hitchhikers MUD[1]?
[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN...
by Towaway69 - I tried MUD a few times as a teenager, but for some reason I didn't like it. I prefered playing RPG on a long dead phpBB forum (LdC), and to this day I remember the very simple mechanic (for both players and gamemaster): an asterisk for character speech, and (#) for everything else.
A single post might look like this:
From what I remember there was no dice at all — the gm just did whatever he'd like. Your character sheet was just a story of your character plus some description. We had a fantastic gamemaster, so it made for great rpg. Good times.# By hearing those absurdities, memories rush to the mind of Vicent Panclast — memories he'd like to avoid. He gets physically agitated and raises his pistol high in the air. * They shall not pass! We must do anything we can to stop these mf nazis!!I wonder what something like that could look like with the right use of AI, today. I'd like to think kids are exploring this kind of thing nowadays - I hope they are, because it's a ton of fun (even without AI, kids).
by gverrilla - I was a bit afraid that MUD was an acronym for something else, I clicked in about 10% hope that this will be for multi user dungeons and behold, thank you. Interesting read.
That brought back memories when we were trying to find free terminal in few departments at our uni to get access to one that has internet connectivity.
by krzyk - I am having a hell of a lot of fun letting agents play and understand a (still alive, human populated) MUD, which I have also played for the last 30 years.
It’s mostly my way to play with local llm inference (m5 64gb, gwen3.6 27).
It’s amazing. They build maps, classify events (building a grammar for a parser), run experiments (to verify the grammar). They are now (given the correct tools/infrastructure) trying to fine-train a 3b model for fighting (where you need a decision for 5 seconds rounds). Basically autonomously!
Overall, a MUD does prove a great constrained sandbox for them to play in.
What started as an experiment to test local inference landed in a sweet spot for seeing models strength/weaknesses/tradeoffs. And it’s really fun.
Only problem is that Claude gets really jealous when I ask him to code their po harness running local inference. Weird world.
by rufasterisco - > the measurements of each LLM
I think you have the correct idea.
If you ask an LLM to solve a multiplication problem using reasoning without code tools, depending on the model, it will get 15 digit (15D) * 15 digit multiplication correct (123456789012345 x 998765432109876). It will take between 4000 and 8000 tokens if Sonnet. Eventually with enough digits, it will start only solving the problem 80% ... then 70% of the time until it has so many digits it will never solve. There will be a certain number of digits where it will not converge on a solution nor will it stop working thinking it can solve it. That is very, very expensive. It takes a lot of runs to determine the probability it will solve it.
What you can do now, this is likely the most important thing, is change the prompt and evaluate how many tokens and at what speed it takes to accomplish the task. Sure the measurements of each LLM are important! Nonetheless, if you can say to a company that you have a technique to tune prompts and evaluate them so instead of spending $1 X 100,000 times a day, they can instead spend $0.90 X 100,000 times a day, you will make a ton of money.
by dataviz1000 - A little irrelevant, but I need to vent about something MUD adjacent.
I really wish MUDs were still a thing. The text-based roleplaying communities were largely swallowed by Discord, where as before they existed scattered over proboards, jcink, and a few others.
Discord, being the imperfect text platform, limits the text and leaves most interaction limited by awkward formatting. To boot, even when a better ecosystem is invented, players refuse to give it a shot even if directly invited, because they got comfortable with Discord's terribleness.
It's so frustrating, and I don't know how to voice it, or even what can be done.
by Varelion