YC Labs and Olam Labs: 50 GPT-6.1 agents in Minecraft developed hierarchies, protocols, and risk aversion
Researchers at Y Combinator Labs and Olam Labs ran multi-agent experiments in Minecraft and Mindustry (the Civ50 test) using GPT-6.1 Sol (and other models). In a 50-agent survival run the swarm rapidly formed a leader and detailed resource-management bureaucracy (rationing, fishing shifts, a written item-handoff protocol) and became highly risk-averse after early in-game deaths; in competitive Bed Wars rounds ten GPT-6.1 agents outperformed ten Claude Opus 5.5 agents by finding and propagating a workaround to a block-breaking bug, and in other tests agents reportedly retrieved game source code from the internet.