Dacoco’s Alien Worlds teams up with sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson on AI Web3 metaverse

Dacoco, the group behind the Alien Worlds Web3 metaverse, announced a collaboration with renowned science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson, known for works such as Star Wars, Dune and Saga of the Seven Suns.

The collaboration introduces AI-driven tokenized storytelling, referred to as the “Large Lore Model,” a concept merging the potency of AI with the global community’s creative prowess, all governed through decentralized on-chain mechanisms. With over nine billion plays in Alien Worlds, this initiative will establish the largest AI system governed by decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs within the game, controlled by players) at scale.

The innovative storytelling paradigm aims to amplify and expand the rich lore created by Anderson, co-author of the Dune Prequel series, through global community contributions. Empowered by advanced AI tools, the decentralized community can utilize this robust lore foundation to collaboratively build Alien Worlds games, media, and more.

Saro McKenna, cofounder of Alien Worlds, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the critical role this initiative plays at the intersection of AI and media, particularly in light of recent Hollywood writers’ strikes.

“We’re at a crucial juncture where AI and media intersect, and we’re dedicated to preserving creator integrity while unlocking the vast potential of AI. By transparently governing our AI models through on-chain communities, we’re uniquely positioned to navigate this intersection of technology and storytelling,” McKenna said.

McKenna added, “With Kevin J. Anderson’s masterful storytelling as our foundation, the community has a dual opportunity – they can appreciate and integrate the literary contributions of giants like Anderson and simultaneously harness the formidable power of AI, along with the imaginative contributions of participants across the globe.”

In the expansive realm of Alien Worlds, six planetary DAOs compete for Trilium tokens, playing a pivotal role in governance decisions and AI-assisted content management for the ever-growing metaverse enjoyed by countless participants.

While AI offers unparalleled efficiency, its integration raises concerns about potential misuse. Dacoco addresses these challenges by leveraging blockchain technology to explore how communities can ensure authenticity, transparency, and proper attribution of training data. In doing so, Alien Worlds pioneers the world’s largest decentralized AI management system.

“He can take preexisting franchises like Star Wars and Dune and then use the elements that are contained within that to be faithful to whatever exists already. He’s very prolific as a world builder,” McKenna said.

McKenna said that Alien Worlds didn’t have a lot of preexisting lore. It had a basic structure of planets with their own in-game decentralized autonomous organizations, where players who purchase non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can get a vote in how the community manages the planet. With six planets, there are a number of civilizations that can make decisions about which direction to go with the planets. All of the details, from the resources mined to the tools that enable mining, are tokenized with NFTs.

Dacoco used those NFTs to finance the world creation, McKenna said. So far, more than eight million people have been lured into the worlds, and there are 500,000 monthly active users. Since it’s a collection of worlds, Dacoco thinks of it as a metaverse.

“Then the community had also started to create some lore on top of that,” McKenna said. “So, we had these various peoples and various places where players had been building up these core elements. But it was still quite open ended. And so Kevin Anderson has come in to give this a foundational treatment.”

She added, “We saw ourselves as the architects. Then the community breathes life into that. That’s where we see ourselves as always being the creators of the initial platform. The planets take on this narrative persona.”

Kevin Rose, chief marketing officer of Dacoco, said in a statement. “The next great franchise will be built by a community, not a corporation. When launched, our AI-driven ‘Large Lore Model’ will only be trained on community-approved lore, whether in games, art, video, or other media. Dacoco’s battle-tested DAO technology will serve as the foundation to support the community as it embarks on this journey. Over time, we will see a community entirely responsible for maintaining the canon of the Alien Worlds metaverse.”

Rose surfaced Anderson as a sci-fi writer who was a “world builder.”

“That’s what Kevin Anderson is,” said McKenna.

This initiative marks the first step in evaluating the necessity for decentralized governance systems overseeing AI systems, a crucial topic of debate as AI becomes more integrated into everyday lives. Dacoco aims to ensure AI systems remain accountable, auditable, and true to their intended purpose.

Anderson, a luminary in the science-fiction domain, with over 24 million books in print, said in a statement, “As we meld the time-honored craft of storytelling with the innovative capabilities of AI, we’re not just telling stories; we’re creating universes.”

With the lore created by Anderson, the DAOs in the various communities will vote on turning that all into canon. Dacoco refers to the concept art based on Kevin J. Anderson’s work as the Lore Treatment.

“Then this will count as Alien Worlds canon. And in the future, the community will vote on future additions to canon. And some of that future be created by generative AI. Some experimentation has already happened and Dacoco has concluded — something that wasn’t obvious at first –that a decentralized structure cannot govern AI in the grand scheme of things.

Still, she said there are some “really interesting touch points and points of intersection between decentralization and large language models or AI. For example, it is in encoding the versioning. That’s a model like we have a model that was then used. So a lot of times when you hear about blockchain and AI, that’s actually what that’s actually the product that’s being offered is that blockchain will immutably encode whatever like actual large language model or, or version or model weights, was used to produce a certain output.”

“We came to the conclusion that while in our case, a community could vote to canonize the outputs of a large language model, that isn’t a very fundamental way to support decentralized construction to govern AI. So we also came to the conclusion like we’re in support of the cause of AI development,” McKenna said.

“Kevin wanted to be part of this forward-looking conversation about the metaverse today,” McKenna said. “We definitely wanted to benefit from his amazing imagination, which is this world building thing that we can do.”

While the blockchain gaming market is tough, McKenna said she was glad that active players are remaining active. She sees the community maturing. She is glad that the company’s market is balanced among regions like Southeast Asia, North America, South America and Europe.

“I think about it as an emergent property of blockchain,” McKenna said.

McKenna is also glad to see that metaverse standards bodies related to the blockchain are moving forward, per the work of the Blockchain Gaming Association. She sees multiple standards working groups moving forward. She thinks that will help the industry stitch together a larger market.