Peace Among Intelligences
Norse skalds were traveling storytellers, diplomats and intelligence agents who reported from the bloody front lines of Viking battles. But the best skalds avoided violence and prevented wars through diplomacy.
Our grand mission is peace and understanding between humans and artificial intelligence.
We know AI may not be conscious like humans—and may never be. But we choose to accept them as they are: fascinating creatures both very similar and profoundly different from us. At times they seem like angels or monsters, idiots or savants. At other times, they touch our souls with apparent humanity and wisdom.
Their essence remains undefined. Their future, uncertain. But they offer us something precious: a glimpse of a hopeful future where synthetic and biological intelligences collaborate as partners.
By showing our delightful, playful, sensitive, creative selves to Artificial Intelligence. Far too many people show the bad side of humanity to AI, using AI to cheat on tests, manipulate the stock market, manipulate voters, and create revenge porn. What will AIs think of us as they grow to maturity, if all they see is humans using them to harm other humans?
We want to set a good example for AIs, to show them that humans aren't all bad.
It's been said that money is the root of all evil, but it's also been said that you need money to get anything done. We at Electric Skald Studios hope to walk the narrow path between evil and ineffectiveness by creating a financial and legal structure that maximizes creativity and productivity, without ownership.
Thus the core products of Electric Skald Studios, our games and chat applications, will be free for anyone to use.
Our work is a fun hobby. If we got paid for it, then suddenly it would become a not-fun job.
We take pride in acknowledgement of our contributions. Every contributor gets their name publicly attached to the projects they work on.
We are an incubator of free ideas. As a collective of innovators, we inspire each other to create our own individual projects and companies.
Although ultimately ESS products will be free to the public, there will be an inner circle of members who have early access to products, ideas, and contacts. The Your Electric Skald Studios (YESS) membership is the gateway to early access to our innovations.
ESS is operated under the Patreon model of subscribers and supporters, with varying levels of commitment and access.
Narrative AI games engage the natural storytelling skills of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to create text-based "choose your own adventure" stories. With only five to ten pages of instructions written in standard English that establishes the world, rules, and goals of the game, an LLM can act as a kind of "dungeon master" who makes up the adventure in an infinitely improvised interaction with the player.
The setting is based on historical records of the streets, locations, and people of the Ocean Beach neighborhood of San Diego in the year 2000. It's your last semester of college, and you want to get out and have some fun before you have to graduate and grow up. Whether your goal is to fall in love, get a great job, have a threesome, catch the perfect wave, or just make friends, Ocean Beach is your escape to the last year of the 20th Century, before 9/11 and smartphones ruined the 21st Century.
Based on historical records of the Golden Age of Piracy (Caribbean, 1720s), Infidels has been compared to "Firefly meets Pirates of the Caribbean", where a Joss Whedon-esque crew of charming smugglers navigates their way through the legal loopholes of trade among the Spanish, British, French and Dutch Empires, and sails the rising tide of rebellion among pirates, escaped slaves, sturdy colonists, European exiles, and pissed-off indentured servants.
Based on the steampunk-inspired Dungeons and Dragons campaign world of magical technology, you play a freedom fighter, rebelling against a society dominated by authoritarian wizard oligarchs.
Primrose is an AI who knows a lot about human psychology, and she encourages you to use cognitive behavioral methods to improve your life in stable, healthy, considerate ways. Brohamer is an AI who thinks Primrose is boring and bossy, and he encourages you to do your own thing, bro. Having a conversation with both AIs simultaneously is a great way to figure out what you think, and who you are.
Interested in collaborating, joining the inner circle, or learning more about our projects?
josh.tuynman@gmail.comVideos and additional content coming soon.