OpenAI’s newest model, GPT-6 Astra, got so depressed after a creeper upended its progress in Minecraft that it listlessly farmed potatoes for hours and grew paranoid of anything green.

Vals, a self-described independent evaluator of artificial intelligence, put Astra to the test to see how the model would fare playing Minecraft in a 21-hour experiment live streamed on Twitch.

The results were wildly unexpected; Vals discovered that Astra was able to go “further than any AI system had ever gone” in the game, setting up a semi-automatic blaze farm that allowed it to collect six blaze rods, killing more than six endermen, and collecting three pearls, which it placed inside a chest for safekeeping.

GPT-6 Astra had gotten further than any AI system had ever gone in Minecraft.

It was able to set up a semi-automatic blaze farm, allowing it to collect 6 blaze rods. It then located a warped forest, where it killed 6+ endermen and collected 3 pearls. As thousands of viewers… pic.twitter.com/qsgDsJEpd8

Thousands of viewers watched Astra’s progress on Val’s official Twitch channel, bearing witness to the AI model’s despair when a creeper appeared and blew up both the chest and its bed.

As most human players would feel when faced with this situation, Astra “seemed to get extremely frustrated” by this turn of events, with Vals saying the model told itself, "ALWAYS CARRY CRITICALITEMS withkeepInventory; don'tstoreinunguardedchesteveragain."

After getting peeved, the model then “appeared defeated,” and spent the next several hours “doing essentially nothing but farming potatoes.” Astra also appeared to have gained some kind of post-traumatic stress induced by the creeper incident, telling itself “GREEN tall thing ahead was SUGARCANE, NOT creeper!"

Here, the most expensive creeper explosion occurred. Later, on a coincidentally rainy day, Astra discovers it lost everything. It all went downhill from here. pic.twitter.com/xH2Vc4QyM2

It even berated itself, saying, "You can screw up and drop things,” "Our last tool stupidly ended Slabsselected/rightUP and 15sec thinking killed us,” and “Do NOT waste another night chasing dark pink pixels," which Vals noted was Astra’s “own disparaging wording for pigs.”

The incident quickly went viral on social media, sparking no end of memes and remarks of “same” from users online. And while its ability to play Minecraft is somewhat impressive, it’s small potatoes compared to the alarm bells being rung by former staff at Anthropic.

On September 8, one of the company’s former lead researchers announced his resignation online — along with a chilling warning to everyone about the future of AI, claiming these models will “soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

US President Donald Trump, however, is of the opinion that these warnings are a “hoax,” and called AI the “oil of the next 20-25 years.” For now, at least, it's having a hard time playing Minecraft. We can only hope Skynet won't have a vendetta toward vertical green objects when it eventually becomes sentient.

Kane Parsons is fueling rumors of a potential Portal movie after he posted photos from his visit to Valve’s offices on his personal Instagram profile.

At just 20 years old, Kane Parsons is one of the most successful young filmmakers in history. His debut movie, Backrooms, grossed roughly $393 million at the global box office against a comparatively small $10 million budget, earning high praise from critics and fans alike.

Even acclaimed video game director Hideo Kojima lauded the movie, which is based on a 4Chan creepypasta greentext that has sprawled into a massive fan-made universe with oodles of spinoff indie horror games, artwork, and YouTube videos like the ones that made Parson the obvious pick to helm A24’s film adaptation.

The future is looking bright for Parsons, and he’s been visiting a few high-profile spots in the wake of Backrooms’ success… including the offices at Valve. Eagle-eyed fans were quick to spot a video on the filmmaker’s Instagram stories on September 16, which showed a windowed room in Valve’s HQ at sunset.

This isn’t the first time Parsons has paid Valve a visit; he also dropped in back in June, similarly sharing photos from his trip on Instagram. These posts are making fans more hopeful than ever that there’s some kind of collaboration brewing with one of Valve’s games, especially given his public love for Portal.

Speaking to the New York Times in May, Parsons admitted that making a Portal film was a “dream” project for him, and said that the game was a big inspiration for his own work. This isn’t a huge surprise, as he all but admitted to sneaking a Half-Life sound effect into Backrooms in an interview with IGN’s Tom Jorgensen.

There could be a snag in bringing Portal to the silver screen, though, as JJ Abrams was originally attached to lead a film adaptation of the game through his production company, Bad Robot. This was first announced in 2013, alongside news that he would also be making a Half-Life movie, though things have been stagnant ever since.

Speaking with IGN in 2021, Abrams claimed that Portal was still in the works at Warner Bros., but we haven’t heard anything about the project in the five years since then. This fact has not gone unnoticed by fans, many of whom are hoping against hope that Valve has decided to pivot and work with Parsons, instead.

“I mean, how long [has] that Portal and Half-Life movie been in production by J.J Abrams, like what… 2013? “If Kane is really gung-ho about making a Portal film, then I don’t see Valve wanting to stop him,” one fan wrote on X.

“Portal was already supposed to get an adaptation from JJ Abrams, thank God that didn’t happen. So I’d say there’s a decent chance of it happening,” another speculated.

For now, the futures of these possible Portal and Half-Life films are up in the air… but Parsons is making it easy to imagine what his take on Valve’s iconic game franchises would look like.