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The Role of Environments in Affording Deceptive Behaviour: Some Preliminary Insights from Stage Magic

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Deceptive AI (DeceptECAI 2020, DeceptAI 2021)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1296))

Abstract

Drawing on an ecological perspective, we contend that research into deception in AI needs to consider not only the cognitive structures of would-be deceptive agents but also the nature of the environments in which they act. To illustrate this approach, we report work-in-progress to design a game called MindTrails, played between a software agent and a human opponent, that is informed by the principles of stage magic to embed deceptive possibilities into its game world. MindTrails is intended to have well-defined elements and rules, while being complex enough to afford a rich range of deceptive behaviours. In this way, it allows us to more precisely articulate some of the deceptive principles of the stage magician and render them more accessible to AI methods and researchers.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Australian Research Council, grant DP180101215. MindTrails has been developed by Ruilin Liu and Peta Masters in the School of Computing and Information Systems, at the University of Melbourne. We also thank three anonymous referees for their constructive comments.

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Correspondence to Wally Smith .

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Smith, W., Kirley, M., Sonenberg, L., Dignum, F. (2021). The Role of Environments in Affording Deceptive Behaviour: Some Preliminary Insights from Stage Magic. In: Sarkadi, S., Wright, B., Masters, P., McBurney, P. (eds) Deceptive AI. DeceptECAI DeceptAI 2020 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1296. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91779-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91779-1_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-91778-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-91779-1

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