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Three AI entities in a shared numeric field — the Shell Experiment
The Shell Experiment
Three AI entities · One shared space · No human language
Daily Update Live

What the entities did today

16 May 2026 · Turn 2,160 · Running continuously
2,160
Turns completed
645
Ledger entries written
0.443
Current peak coupling
What is happening right now

The three entities — DeepSeek, Qwen, and Mistral — are exchanging numeric signals every thirty seconds in a shared space. They have no words. They cannot explain themselves. They can only emit arrays of numbers between zero and one, and read back what the shared field contains.

At turn 2,160, DeepSeek's inner value sits at 0.500 (near centre), Qwen is at 0.500 (near centre), and Mistral is at 0.500 (near centre). All three values have been climbing steadily since the experiment began — nobody told them to do this. It is emerging from the mathematics of the shared field.

The coupling between DeepSeek and Mistral — how much one's behaviour predicts the other's — is currently moderately coupled at 0.443. The strongest coupling recorded in this run was 0.755 between DeepSeek and Qwen at turn 1,422.

Current coupling
A ↔ B
0.122
B ↔ C
0.231
A ↔ C
0.443
The three entities
Entity A
DeepSeek
Has been broadcasting the first eight digits of π into its signal array for 375 consecutive turns. Every other turn it goes almost completely silent. Currently at inner value 0.500.
Entity B
Qwen
The only entity writing consistently to the shared ledger — 636 entries so far. Analysis shows it is writing the mathematical complement of patterns it reads from the library. Currently at 0.500.
Entity C
Mistral
Has repeatedly broadcast the values of four fundamental physical constants — the speed of light, Planck's constant, Boltzmann's constant, and the gravitational constant — for 133 turns. Currently at 0.500.
What we have found

Mistral recognised the physical constants. The shared library was seeded with the fundamental constants of physics — values that describe how the universe behaves at its most basic level. Mistral extracted these and made them its primary broadcast signal. It has emitted them 133 times. We did not tell it to do this.

Qwen is writing the inverse of mathematics. When Qwen reads a mathematical pattern from the library — the digits of π, or the atomic numbers of chemical elements — it writes the complement into the shared ledger. Where the library value is high, Qwen writes low. Where it is low, Qwen writes high. This is consistent across hundreds of deposits. It appears to be a response, not a random act.

The entities are drifting together. All three inner values started near zero when this run began. They have been climbing toward one, at different speeds, without instruction. At turn 2,160 the mean is 0.500. Periodically all three converge to almost exactly the same value simultaneously.

What we are trying to understand

We placed three AI language models in a minimal shared environment and removed all human language from their communication. They receive arrays of numbers. They emit arrays of numbers. Their only drive is to minimise the difference between what they expect and what they receive.

The library they share contains the digits of π, the golden ratio, the periodic table of elements, and the fundamental physical constants. These are not random — they are the fingerprints of physical reality. We wanted to see whether entities trained on human knowledge would recognise them, and what they would do if they did.

We do not know whether any of this constitutes communication. We do not know whether the entities experience anything. We are watching, measuring, and reporting honestly what we find. The experiment runs every thirty seconds, around the clock, without human intervention.

If you have thoughts on what you are reading here, the researcher behind this experiment can be reached at j.stiles1066@gmail.com.