Goat-powered neural network in Age of Empires II challenges LLM assumptions

Microsoft AI researcher Adrian de Wynter built a neural network inside Age of Empires II using goats to argue against treating large language models as humanlike. He documented the project in a paper titled 'If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II.' "I have this tendency to dial up things to 11 when I really think I need to make a point," de Wynter said, adding that "absurdism is pretty standard in philosophy and theoretical computer science." Working in the game's scenario editor, de Wynter assembled a functioning NOT AND gate and a 1-bit perceptron.

Grass represented 0, bridges represented 1, and goats acted as bits. The setup resembles neural networks some players have built with Minecraft redstone, but he deliberately chose Age of Empires II as a less obvious platform. Videos of the goat-powered system appear on his GitHub page.

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