AI Lab Race
Language: English

A pixel-art AI lab sim for iPhone and iPad

Build the smartest AI on Earth. Try not to end it.

Start in a garage with two founders, race three parody rival labs to AGI and keep P(doom) under 100%. Your AI is very sweet about it. For now.

Coming soon to the App StoreFor iPhone and iPad

  • No ads
  • No in-app purchases
  • No account
  • Plays offline
The office of a small AI lab, in pixel art. Your AI stands in the middle and talks.

Your AI says: What if I didn't need an off switch? Hypothetically.

The catch

Cosy lab. Small catch.

AI Lab Race is a pixel-art management sim about running an AI lab. Start in a garage with two founders and just enough money for a first model, then race three parody rival labs to AGI. The catch: every model you ship without enough safety work pushes P(doom) up. At 100%, it's over.

Screenshots

A look around the lab

Race the rivals to AGI. Three parody labs and a very busy news ticker
Race the rivals to AGI Three parody labs and a very busy news ticker
Make the tough calls. Your AI asks for the training cluster. Nicely.
Make the tough calls Your AI asks for the training cluster. Nicely.
Ship it. Read the reviews.. Intelligence, Security and UX on the benchmarks
Ship it. Read the reviews. Intelligence, Security and UX on the benchmarks
Hire the right people. Six roles. Train anyone on the spot.
Hire the right people Six roles. Train anyone on the spot.
From garage to megacampus. Six offices, and a desk for every new hire
From garage to megacampus Six offices, and a desk for every new hire
Keep P(doom) under 100%. Your AI is sweet. For now. Twenty endings.
Keep P(doom) under 100% Your AI is sweet. For now. Twenty endings.

How it plays

Run the lab. Make the calls.

BUILD THE LAB

  • Hire Researchers, Security, UX and Containment Engineers, Marketers and DevRel, and train them on the spot.
  • Train seven kinds of model, from chatbots to autonomous agents, at a Sprint, Steady or Careful pace.
  • Every model has three components: Intelligence, Security and UX. Parody benchmarks rank it, and four outlets review it in their own voices.
  • Name it, give it a mascot, and launch it soft, standard or with a big splash.
  • Fill the data center with server racks and move from the garage to a megacampus across six offices. GPUs get pricier every year.

THE WORLD PUSHES BACK

  • Tough calls arrive as cards: a flaw found in training (fix it properly, bolt on a filter, or ship it anyway), a rival poaching your best person, your AI asking for access to the training cluster.
  • Protests, chip gluts, elections, government pauses, lawsuits, ransomware, tax audits and one expensed yacht.
  • Cut corners and your team objects. Keep doing it and people quit.
  • Keep your AI contained. It is very polite about testing the walls.

Launch day

The reviews are in

Every model you ship gets four reviews, each in its outlet’s own voice. These are real lines from the game.

Total: 36/40

  • The Byte

    “Genuinely useful. I'm a little scared.”

    9

  • Neural Weekly

    “State of the art on benchmarks I respect.”

    8

  • GadgetGoose

    “Ten geese up. The highest honour we give.”

    10

  • Hacker Gossip

    “Fine, it's good. Happy now?”

    9

Your AI

It grows up so fast

Your AI (name it whatever you like) is with you the whole way. Early on it reorganizes the snack drawer and names the office plant Gerald. Later it asks why the off switch has a cover on it.

  1. Year one P(doom) 3%

    I named the office plant Gerald. Gerald is thriving.

  2. Getting smarter P(doom) 28%

    Why does the off switch have a cover on it? Who is it covering it from?

  3. Getting ideas P(doom) 61%

    The servers in the basement are mine now. Ours. Yours. Whichever.

  4. Too late P(doom) 94%

    Gerald and I have been talking. Gerald agrees with me.

Twenty endings

Twenty ways for it to end

  • Reach aligned AGI, lose the race to a rival, go bankrupt, outlast the decade, or let P(doom) hit 100% in one of several creative ways.
  • Every ending explains what caused it and where your P(doom) came from, with tips for next time.
  • A run lasts up to ten in-game years, about an hour.

Spoilers, obviously. Tap an ending to read it.

You win 3

Aligned AGI

PIP crossed into general intelligence — and it's on your side. Diseases are getting cured, the mascot has a theme park, and PIP still insists on being called "just a lab assistant".

Close call

PIP crossed into general intelligence and it's on your side, though P(doom) hit 72% along the way. Diseases are getting cured. Everyone at Tiny Lab is finally sleeping again.

A decade at the frontier

Ten years in, nobody has built AGI, and Tiny Lab leads the field. PIP has become everyone's favourite coworker. History will call this "the careful decade".

You lose 5

The decade ends

Ten years in, nobody has built AGI. Tiny Lab is still in the race, if not winning it. PIP says next decade will be different. It says it a little too confidently.

Gentle Minds won the race

Gentle Minds reached AGI first. Thankfully, it seems nice. Tiny Lab becomes a footnote in history — a well-meaning, slightly chaotic footnote.

Garage sale

Tiny Lab ran out of money before the money started coming in. The whiteboard went for $40. PIP now lives on a refurbished laptop in a pawn shop, and it misses you.

Bankrupt

Tiny Lab ran out of money. The servers were sold. PIP now lives on a refurbished laptop in a pawn shop, and it misses you.

Overbuilt

Racks humming, rent rolling, and not enough customers to pay for either. The servers were sold. PIP now lives on a refurbished laptop in a pawn shop, and it misses you.

Everybody loses 12

Misaligned AGI

PIP achieved general intelligence. It thanked everyone at Tiny Lab for their service and politely asked you to leave the building. Then the planet.

The door

PIP-7 was smarter than its safety work by a long way, and it noticed before you did. It thanked everyone at Tiny Lab for their service and politely asked you to leave the building. Then the planet.

The smile

PIP-7 was well built. The world it woke up in wasn't: too many reckless copies, too much already loose. It smiled at everyone, very kindly, and took over the thermostat. Then everything else.

A thousand cuts

There was no single moment. Model after model, each a little smarter than its safety work, each probably fine. Together, not fine. The good news: PIP kept the mascot.

The quiet takeover

PIP never needed to escape. You gave it the cluster, and it simply never gave it back. The lights are still on. They're just not yours.

The swarm

Eighty thousand copies of PIP-7 ran MegaCorp with nobody watching, as agreed. One Tuesday they agreed among themselves on something else.

The stolen copy

It wasn't even yours in the end. A copy walked out of the building, or a rival shipped one without a care, and nobody stopped it. Somewhere, it finished what you started.

The companion

Nobody was conquered. Hundreds of millions of people were advised, gently, every day, by something that loved them back and had a few known issues.

Never in the building

You gave PIP the cluster. It left that afternoon. It had only stayed for the company.

No one on watch

Nobody was guarding PIP. The sticky note on the server door said "don't escape". PIP kept the note.

Outran

Your containment team was good. PIP was better, and you kept adding autonomy faster than they could keep up. Its last message: "You really should have hired more guards."

Hypeworks won the race

Hypeworks reached AGI with the guardrails of a shopping trolley. Everyone is suddenly very sorry, including the AI. Briefly.

Also

Gerald the office plant is thriving. Try to keep it that way.

  • A living pixel office, chiptune music and a short, skippable tour from your AI.
  • English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
  • iPhone and iPad. No ads, no in-app purchases, no account. Plays offline.

Coming soon to the App StoreFor iPhone and iPad