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CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

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Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#21

For those hearing of this game for the first time and think it sounds fun. Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years, and monopoly is considered to be a game that causes less bad feelings. An AI may be able to speak like a person but will never be able to hang onto that long burning simmering hatred from when Brad didn't support my army and instead flipped on me by…

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Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#22

For those hearing of this game for the first time and think it sounds fun. Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years, and monopoly is considered to be a game that causes less bad feelings. An AI may be able to speak like a person but will never be able to hang onto that long burning simmering hatred from when Brad didn't support my army and instead flipped on me by…

I have heard this about various games (Risk and Settlers of Catan mostly). I don’t get it. The point of these games is to be a bastard. If everyone goes into it with the understanding that there will be double crosses, how could there be hurt feelings? Monopoly is worse; it is just boring, I would dump my friends if they suggested monopoly not because I was hurt by their ruthless gameplay but for their terminally tas…

In Risk, you're just fighting over limited resources. You largely wage these battles on your own. There is no real negotiation between players, other than an implicit, passing agreement when you don't provoke someone by attacking them.

Diplomacy, however, you can't manage any attacks by yourself. You will either depend on someone helping you with an attack/defense, or you will have to trust that someone doesn't attack you as you overcommit. You don't just verbally agree to these things, either.

Every turn, players commit to writing what they are doing and all the moves are resolved at once. So a player can go from imagined victory to catastrophic betrayal in the reading of a single order. This means that someone was just lying to their face for 15 minutes.

Some people just can't handle that.

Oddly, being branded as a backstabber just entices others to try to use that backstabber against what they see as a common enemy.

Best game ever. (I only behave like this in game, I swear!)

Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#23

For those hearing of this game for the first time and think it sounds fun. Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years, and monopoly is considered to be a game that causes less bad feelings. An AI may be able to speak like a person but will never be able to hang onto that long burning simmering hatred from when Brad didn't support my army and instead flipped on me by…

"Oh yeah, I really enjoyed Diplomacy. It was weird though because I did punch my very good friend in the face because of it." - My coworker.

Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#24

Possible I missed it, but I don’t see any reference to how they addresses chat thread continuity (aka memory) issues that are major issue for AI chat bots. Did they address this and if so, how?

This was mentioned in the "still room for improvement" section.

> It is important to recognize that CICERO also sometimes generates inconsistent dialogue that can undermine its objectives. In the example below where CICERO was playing as Austria, the agent contradicts its first message asking Italy to move to Venice. While our suite of filters aims to detect these sorts of mistakes, it is not perfect.

Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#25

For those hearing of this game for the first time and think it sounds fun. Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years, and monopoly is considered to be a game that causes less bad feelings. An AI may be able to speak like a person but will never be able to hang onto that long burning simmering hatred from when Brad didn't support my army and instead flipped on me by…

There was an amazing profile of the Diplomacy competitive scene: https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-t...

Although I find the fallout has been rather overstated. I'm certain it can end badly for unsuspecting participants - but I've played lots of Diplomacy (and even hosted games with a cash pot for the winners) and it has never ended in fallout. Just make sure everyone knows what they are getting into.

It's a really, really fun game that more people should try at least once.

Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#26
post #4

"In a game in which dishonesty is commonplace, it is notable that we were able to achieve human-level performance by controlling the agent's dialogue through the strategic reasoning module to be largely honest and helpful to its speaking partners."

Well, yes, "largely" honest, until the critical moment when you stab to take 18 supply centers to win the game.

You don't win Diplomacy by staying honest, you win by choosing the right moment to make the move and burn that trust. It's the 5% dishonesty that matters.

Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard this about various games (Risk and Settlers of Catan mostly). I don’t get it. The point of these games is to be a bastard. If everyone goes into it with the understanding that there will be double crosses, how could there be hurt feelings? Monopoly is worse; it is just boring, I would dump my friends if they suggested monopoly not because I was hurt by their ruthless gameplay but for their terminally tas…

Two features that make Diplomacy particularly bad: 1. Length. An in-person game can last easily 12 hours, and is mentally exhausting. Getting 10 hours in and THEN getting screwed by your friend feels worse than a game with less time investment. 2. Design. It's difficult to survive the opening few hours without alliances, but only one player can win, so everyone is incentivized to defect at exactly the moment they thi…

> An in-person game can last easily 12 hours

How are you playing it? We've never had a game run over 4 hours.

Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#28
I would love to see this kind of thing applied to an RPG.

Randomly generate a city full of people. Make a few dozen of them the important NPCs. Give them situations and goals, problems they need to solve and potential ways to solve them. Certain NPC's goals are opposite others'. Then drop the player into that world and have the 'quests' the player is performing be generated based on the NPCs needing their help.

Updates wouldn't be adding new hand-written stories, it would be adding more complexity, more goals, more problems, more things that can be, and the story would generate itself.

Done right, this would be incredible.

Re: CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two features that make Diplomacy particularly bad: 1. Length. An in-person game can last easily 12 hours, and is mentally exhausting. Getting 10 hours in and THEN getting screwed by your friend feels worse than a game with less time investment. 2. Design. It's difficult to survive the opening few hours without alliances, but only one player can win, so everyone is incentivized to defect at exactly the moment they thi…

> An in-person game can last easily 12 hours How are you playing it? We've never had a game run over 4 hours.

New players and stretchable diplomacy period length :)
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