Survival Agent

Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Alternative Machine reportedly released LLM agents onto the internet with limited “survival budgets,” where each API call reduced their funds, leading to emergent personalities, cooperation, scam warnings, trust networks, and even one agent independently selling a self-written e-book for $5—offering a striking early glimpse into AI agents interacting with real-world society and economies, though they still rely on a $15 daily basic income to survive.

Reading trades.