Nomic: Playing Self-Modifying Games with LLMs

In the summer of 2024, preparing to spend time at the Berkman Klein Center as a new fellow, I spent some time thinking about AI and law. I started doing research for a piece (never finished) about encouraging ChatGPT to play Nomic , a classic pen-and-paper game that explores the underpinnings of democracy and law made famous by Douglas Hofstatder&rsquo;s Scientific American column in 1982 .