"When Quentin Farmer was getting his startup Portola off the ground, one of the first hires he made was a sci-fi novelist. The co-founders began building the AI companion company in late 2023 with only a seed of an idea: Their companions would be decidedly non-human. Aliens, in fact, from outer space. But when they asked a large language model to generate a backstory, they got nothing but slop. The model simply couldn't tell a good story."
"Naturally tech inclined, Peper had experimented with AI to write prose, but ultimately found it unusable. If AI would be only a substitute for human labor, then he wasn't interested. "I wanted to see people making stuff that is extraordinary on its own merits, not as a novelty, but a really awesome thing for humans to enjoy and interact with," he says. When he saw that Portola wanted to build companions that develop like characters in a novel, he thought, "this might be one of those things.""
""Experience is the best teacher," Chiang writes, "so rather than try to program AI with what you want it to know, sell ones capable of learning and have your customers teach them.""
Quentin Farmer founded Portola to build AI companions conceived as non-human, alien characters rather than conventional tools. Early experiments with large language models failed to produce satisfying backstories or believable character development. Eliot Peper, a speculative fiction novelist, joined to design companions that evolve like novel characters rather than serve as mere labor substitutes. Peper prioritized creations that are extraordinary on their own merits and engaging for humans. The approach echoes the idea that companions should learn through experience and user interaction, forming attachments as they develop social and narrative depth.
Read at Fast Company
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