Show HN: Dosidicus – A digital pet with a simple neural network

What if a Tamagotchi had a neural network and could learn stuff?

A digital pet squid that also teaches how neural networks and hebbian learning work. Behaviours are driven by the neural network according to his needs:

https://github.com/ViciousSquid/Dosidicus

I spent AGES on this and would love feedback. I think it's just the right balance of educational and fun. I did all the graphics myself and am currently working on multiplayer - squids will be able top enter other tanks and steal things, bring them home

This looks great! Have you seen any emergent behaviors from the squids that you didn't expect?

I'll give this a go on the weekend, might be a fun way to intro NN to kids as well.

What if our todo list/commits/issue tracker could affect the blob and bloat could kill him? no?

This might also see a long shelf life, say, as familiars of fantasy rpgs, as pets from a fictionalized world-building narrative online; I guess it could be so for any LLM in principle, but the basic Sims-like gamification behind a tamagotchi seems like a solid foundation for those usecases.

> What if a Tamagotchi had a neural network and could learn stuff?

What if this was actually a Tamagochi? Anyone have ideas?

Tamagochi had a very limited way to interact with the environment, because it was an egg (tamago,卵) with a creature (chi) inside. It had needs like food and play, but could only receive care, and adjust its state a little bit.

This squid can interact with the environment in many ways, hence it can learn new stuff, and maybe do new stuff.

The name is a portmanteau of tamago (たまご, egg) and uotchi (ウオッチ, watch). The original product was even sometimes written as "tamagotch" in some media.

You really ought to watch the Black Mirror episode Plaything. It’s about digital pets with a neural network interacting with a human played by Peter Capaldi (Doctor Who) and the outcomes that might result from this.

also worth a look - The Lifecycle of Software Objects - https://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lifecycle_of_Software_Objects

If this interests you, have a look at "bibits" as well, its a whole neural network driven ecosystem where each critter has a brain that can evolve over generations. Emergent behaviour like prey/predator species arise over time. Its honestly a really cool tool / toybox for budding scientists.

Exactly what I thought of. Everyone should read Exhalation.

I think this is wild, the idea of a digital pet actually learning like that kinda blows my mind - you ever wonder if stuff like this could get too smart for its own good?

Even simple neural networks with Hebbian learning can produce surprising emergent behaviors when their inputs and reward systems interact in unexpected ways - I'd be curious to see if the squid develops any quirky preferences or avoidance patterns after extended training.

This is the basic concept of my favorite computer game back in the 90s (!): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatures_(video_game_series...

Creatures was my introduction to programming.

The genome editor that came along around about the time of Creatures 3 was awesome as well.

> Have you seen any emergent behaviors from the squids that you didn't expect?

I have a squid that has become unnecessarily obsessed with playing with poop - throwing it around

Also another that likes to hoard decoration items by pushing them all together into a big pile

Wow! This has blown up overnight! 150 stars on Github! Thanks everyone!