[SubiculumCode]

For me it was right at the beginning. They said it was a dungeon game. It would describe a room, etc, and I would take some action. But I thought that this dungeon was built in some intricate database. But then I told it that I wanted to leave, got to an inn, where I flirted with the bar waitress, and soon we were watching the sunset in some meadow. As cheesy as that was, it was then that I went "oh shit" this is a machine that can respond to language with language in a way that simulated actual understanding and intelligence, concepts and schema, and everything else, and I knew then that the world would never be the same again. People here talk about the crazy things they solved with AI, and I get that...but the first time I actually talked to a machine and didn't feel like it was either random gibberish or scripted, but dynamic and responsive. The first alien I ever met, and he knew my language.

[futureshock]

Yes I was the exact same. I got curious during the GPT-3 release and went over to AI Dungeon. It was just running GPT-2. Hmm wow interesting. This felt new! Then I subscribed so I could use GPT-3 powered AI Dungeon. My jaw dropped. I was talking to that model for weeks. There was a whole human universe in there. You never knew what you could get it to spit out. There were glimmers that this could be huge. It was wild and untamed and practically useless, but there was a behemoth under that prompt.

I was sure this would eventually turn into something. I naturally wanted to converse with it as a chatbot, though it could only stay on task for a few turns. RL and guardrails would come later but it was clearly the foundational step towards AGI for me. From something I thought I would never see in my lifetime to very real and in front of me.

ChatGPT didn't even really rock my world, everything since that moment has been another baby step. But when you take a look back from 2026 models to 2020 it's astounding how far and how fast we've come.

[jldugger]

> But then I told it that I wanted to leave, got to an inn, where I flirted with the bar waitress, and soon we were watching the sunset in some meadow.

Immediate Silicon Valley vibes: https://youtu.be/S8MAV9jhf04?t=18

[tkocmathla]

Reminds me of Microsoft Research's TextWorld [1] (from 2018!).

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/textworld

[jml7c5]

Was this AI Dungeon? If I recall correctly, it was popular as a way to access GPT-3 which wasn't available publicly.

[SubiculumCode]

I don't recall. I am pretty sure it was a link I clicked from HN article or comment though.

[SubiculumCode]

Also I remember that the link was temporary...like it was inactive a day later...so it may have been a little preview with gpt-3 for HN-ers....

[jml7c5]

It looks like I misremembered a bit. The first iteration that blew up was AI Dungeon 2 (probably this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21717022 ), which he apparently had to shut down after a day or two because it ended up costing $20,000 for weird GCS reasons.

It was briefly an easy way to access GPT-3 before the public release, but that was later and apparently not as important as I thought.

[SubiculumCode]

I bet that was it. Thanks!