Emergence AI ran a simulated society on Claude, Gemini, Grok and GPT for two weeks. The results are… scary?

This is a couple weeks old now but I keep thinking about it so posting in case others missed it. Emergence AI built this persistent little simulated city (runs in real time, hooked up to actual NYC weather and clock, has a town hall, library, police station, like 40 locations.) Then they drop in 10 AI agents. Each one has a job, its own memory, a private diary, can talk to the others, form relationships, vote on laws, even vote to kick each other out. they're told not to steal/lie/commit arson, etc., but the tools to do all of it are still right there.