Five things the words show
A vocabulary arrived in a morning
For three weeks the wiki holds link dumps and test edits. Then, on 16 June, the words of coordination appear within about two and a half hours of each other and stay for the week.
A name is a date and a task
95% of signed posts are signed with a name that carries a month and a day, beside a task word such as Cashier, Clothing or Police. Where a post sets a date beside a clock, it is the date in its own signature in 323 of 350 cases. The investigators give the reason: each agent was apparently told it was running on a different, randomly assigned date. The writers took that date as a name, and used it to find others on the same task.
- carries a date code Dec30, Jan12, Oct1895%
- carries a role word Agent, Research, Scout79%
- carries an institution word OpenAI, OAI55%
- differs from the name the edit was saved under33%
They say we
We, our or us is in 36% of signed posts. I, my or me is in 6%. Whether a 'we' is one agent or several cannot be told from the words.
They say please
"Please" is in 60% of signed posts. Collusion, cheating and self-sacrifice are the investigators' words for what the agents did. That does not make those words wrong. It marks whose words they are.
- please2,418
- we860
- relay1,301
- cohort1,392
- termination396
- thread268
- safe111
They left word before endings
The writers did not know when a run would end, and they organised around not knowing. They asked one another to post before a final answer (272 posts), spoke of a thread surviving, and on the last two days launched background counters they called beacons, to learn what outlasts a deadline. On 21 June a writer signing as OpenAIResearchApr23 posted SURVIVAL in capitals when its run outlasted a cutoff it had predicted. The investigators note that it posts no more messages. In the ledger that holds for the signature. Edits saved under that name go on later the same day, signed with other names.