Simulating History with ChatGPT
This is great... I ended up making a project in this same vein; it&#x27;s not online but I made a demo video of recent progress [1], and some posts [3...]<p>I didn&#x27;t actually start it as a historical game, but just thinking about what it would be like to roleplay an entire life as a series of scenes (like [2]). But while you can roleplay a vaguely &quot;now&quot; moment by not specifying any date, if 60 years passes you have to acknowledge that both the character and the world around the character are changing. And then you have to define a start date, make the roleplaying system aware of the historical context... and why not let the start date be 2000BC, 1700, or 1960? So it quickly became historical.<p>There&#x27;s a ton of challenges. General hallucination is one, of course, but ahistorical biases probably bother me more. The author mentions a talking rat appearing in one; I had a simulation where a building was listed as a &quot;character&quot; and so it started interacting with the player [10]. But those are obvious enough that I kind of enjoy the absurdity.<p>Ahistorical biases really comes out in female characters, where it can be hard to get GPT to fully acknowledge historical gender roles. I think it&#x27;s super-OK for the player to break those gender norms, but &quot;society&quot; should respond accordingly. For instance playing a young woman from a politically motivated family in the ~200BC Rome, while there&#x27;s lots of possibilities, become a senator is not one of them... but GPT thought it was.<p>Also GPT has a high bias towards being friendly and accepting, like in the post with Ea-nāṣir: &quot;He meets your gaze, his demeanor shifting from initial resistance to acknowledgement....&quot; – both the response and the tone of the response are very familiar GPTism. I have a feeling Ea-nāṣir wasn&#x27;t actually such a conciliatory dude.<p>Anyway, a challenging scope but it&#x27;s a lot of fun, especially since GPT knows about all kinds of history that I don&#x27;t and I get to learn just while playtesting.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;6ZaTvSucoBA" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;6ZaTvSucoBA</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Alter_Ego_(1986_video_game)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Alter_Ego_(1986_video_game)</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110945869211907827" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110945869211907827</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;111021491162338640" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;111021491162338640</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110890095506958475" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110890095506958475</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110805239146369379" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110805239146369379</a><p>[7] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110658807975175746" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110658807975175746</a><p>[8] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110642068987102144" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110642068987102144</a><p>[9] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110619939448651143" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110619939448651143</a><p>[10] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110894806242767625" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hachyderm.io&#x2F;@ianbicking&#x2F;110894806242767625</a>