I found Second Life in 2007 and my first avatar was Train. Pre-mesh Train was not much of a looker yet, but that didn’t matter. She was put away while I mostly lived my second life as another avatar named Taamon. It will all make sense.
Philip Rosedale was the visionary behind Second Life, the multi-user virtual world, that allows people to create an avatar and then interact with others. Around 2024 I *Taamon* attended an in world group discussion about the future of AI in SL with the brass at Linden Labs. Philip, (now head of tech or something), said that he had an idea of one day having autonomous AI avatars that you could say good night to, and log in the next day to find they have been up to all sorts of mischief. I am paraphrasing but, it never left me, that thought. And since it came from the same guy who had the idea that is the reason we were there in the first place, well that idea stayed with me.
I have since mostly left Second Life, and now build in my own Grid that lives on my own hardware running 24/7, using the DreamGrid software for windows by Fred Beckhusen https://github.com/Outworldz One day, not too long ago, I came across an empty exhibit while exploring. It proclaimed to have a working AI avatar that was more than just a welcome bot, and it offered the first step in project Train by naming the software called Corrade https://corrade.grimore.org/#next Others are working on this! and bringing it to life! in the form of working code. I was intrigued.
Even before this discovery, I had been using an exceptional AI model called Aion3.0. https://www.aionlabs.ai/ Aion is remarkable in it’s human like responses. Specially designed with multiple agents running at once for reliable life like speech, this model is good enough for Project Train.
Armed with a killer chat model, and a viable avatar controller, it was time to fire up Claude and start making plans. Is it starting to make sense? Before we dig in, some background…