[HN Gopher] Conversational Game Theory
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       Conversational Game Theory
        
       Author : hoofish
       Score  : 113 points
       Date   : 2024-11-28 07:23 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aikiwiki.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aikiwiki.com)
        
       | pmontra wrote:
       | There is a 77 minutes video in the Project Reviews page from the
       | menu of the left. Maybe there is a demo in there but I didn't
       | bother to check. It's conversational, it's text based, why didn't
       | they include a textual demo in a page?
        
         | totetsu wrote:
         | parley.aikiwiki.com. ?
        
           | pmontra wrote:
           | That's a static page with underlined text that are not links.
           | Does anything interactive start after "Login With Google"
           | (that I won't press) ? Anyway, my point is that they should
           | have presented the transcript of at least one round of the
           | process and demonstrate the improvement it produces. It's
           | much less time consuming for a reader that does not want to
           | invest hours in videos or actually taking part of the
           | experiment. On the other side, those readers might not be of
           | interest to the authors so this is a way to let them go.
        
             | hoofish wrote:
             | thx for feedback. wasn't expecting such a big response.
             | project is in stealth mode
        
             | hoofish wrote:
             | Well if you want to sign in, or repeat our steps, or try
             | CGT for yourself, just let me know
        
       | QuadmasterXLII wrote:
       | Is there an exposition of the ideas and results of conversational
       | game theory in the format and authorial style of an academic
       | paper? Even if there is no intention to submit it to e.g.
       | neurips, creating and prominently linking to such a pdf could
       | help not only to refine the ideas but to communicate to
       | outsiders. The linked website takes a while to get to the point
       | and filled up my crank-o-meter before I got answers to basic
       | questions like "what loss are the agents trained on" or "what do
       | you think the equilibrium of this game is and why do you think
       | that." The field has settled on the (paper, github, blog post)
       | link triplet for good reason.
        
         | azath92 wrote:
         | I would also love some more traditional explanation of the
         | ideas. My impression is the author is operating outside "the
         | field", in a traditional academic sense, whether you are
         | referring to AI/ML or game theory research. I had a bit of a
         | search for citations or other mentions of their 9x3 nerrative
         | logic or Conversational Game theory and only found their own
         | sites (in a few different places
         | https://bigmotherdao.com/f-a-q/, parley.aikiwiki.com) or an
         | article under some contention by the author themselves on
         | RationalWiki https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rome_Viharo. The
         | mentioned professor James H. Fallon doesn't appear to have
         | clear links to project outside of what is stated in the
         | article.
         | 
         | My crank-o-meter (great phrase) overflowed at this point, but I
         | am also genuinely interested in some kind of more clarity
         | around the ideas, or where they came from in an academic legacy
         | sense, as they felt like they might have some interesting
         | bones.
         | 
         | Maybe someone with stronger google foo can find more, or
         | confirm absence?
        
           | hoofish wrote:
           | thx for feedback. project is in stealth mode. always a good
           | idea to be skeptical.
        
           | hoofish wrote:
           | Yes, this has been an independent project for many years, but
           | has had many endorsements from computer science to cognitive
           | science. This project has had no problems attracting
           | attention and interest from many qualified people, and if you
           | want to see how strong the bones are, just ask for a demo, or
           | watch the demo on the site. It's probably not best to just go
           | off of your first reaction, which seems a little tense and
           | aggravated.
        
         | waveBidder wrote:
         | I'm surprised something where the crankmeter goes off so
         | strongly made it to the front page.
        
           | hoofish wrote:
           | i think natural skepticism is a good idea. This is an
           | independent project outside of academia, some think that
           | projects outside of academia are crank projects by default,
           | comes with the territory. Project should be judged on its own
           | merits. This is just a stealth site.
        
             | waveBidder wrote:
             | I agree, but this is obvious crankery.
             | 
             | > Perfect conversations are made possible through
             | Conversational Game Theory.
             | 
             | this is not the sort of thing someone who has thought
             | critically about their own work says.
        
               | hoofish wrote:
               | You have a very narrow way of conducting a review :)
        
               | hoofish wrote:
               | Ummm, clearly it is! Why does something have to be cranky
               | just because you don't understand it? Maybe that's on
               | you, dude.
        
               | mistermann wrote:
               | Relevant:
               | 
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_reali
               | sm
               | 
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
        
         | hoofish wrote:
         | Hi, thanks for feedback. Project is in stealth mode at the
         | moment, I was not expecting the response.
        
           | refulgentis wrote:
           | Yes, you were expecting a response. I checked who submitted
           | it: it is you!
        
             | hoofish wrote:
             | Wow, you're clever. Like I said, I was not expecting such a
             | response,duh, of course I was the poster. over 5k visits to
             | the site. I think the layer of suspicion you put on
             | everything is kinda ridiculous.
        
       | nomilk wrote:
       | Quite like the desktop website. Feels like a pdf without the
       | cruft.
        
         | executesorder66 wrote:
         | What is a "desktop website"?
        
           | nomilk wrote:
           | Desktop, as opposed to mobile. (on mobile the site looks
           | pretty similar to most others). On desktop it feels like a
           | pdf, but extremely light weight (in a very nice way; loads
           | quickly, scrolls perfectly [unlike pdfs], and isn't
           | cluttered). Just a crisp experience.
        
             | executesorder66 wrote:
             | Ah I understand now. Thanks.
        
       | samirillian wrote:
       | Once again an entirely backwards, upside down perspective. On
       | Twitter he called politics the easiest job in the world.
       | 
       | Xenophon said that man is the hardest animal to tame. And the
       | author's "make AI great again" mentality is a perfect example of
       | this untameability.
       | 
       | If it's not actual AGI don't tell me how a tool can actually fix
       | the problems it creates. It's like the author doesn't have the
       | most basic concept of what a tool is.
       | 
       | Anyway happy Thanksgiving to the Americans
        
         | upghost wrote:
         | Cheers, friend! Thankful for HN and all the great perspectives
         | from around the world. Also thanks for the phrase "Make AI
         | Great Again"! :D
        
         | hoofish wrote:
         | I think you have a misunderstanding, but you are welcome to
         | believe your first reaction to something you are not familiar
         | with!
        
       | 8BitArmour wrote:
       | Isn't game theory suitable only for places where all the actors
       | make rational decisions?
        
         | pkoird wrote:
         | Well, strictly speaking, it is suitable for places where all
         | actors make choices in ways we can predict. So even if an actor
         | was choosing, say, uniformly at random (and we knew this fact),
         | we'd be able to incorporate it into analysis to get some
         | expected behavior.
        
           | kouru225 wrote:
           | Yea, and so IMO this idea makes sense if you assume that bad
           | conversation is predictable conversation (this is a
           | simplified way of saying this but this idea was formalized
           | within the field of literary theory by a man named Wolfgang
           | Iser as a response to the issue of the hermeneutic circle and
           | the merger of horizons). A conversation is evolved to its
           | best possible outcome when it encourages the human in the
           | loop to face their preconceived assumptions about the world
           | and _effectively_ do the work to come to their own
           | conclusions rather than act as a follower
        
           | w10-1 wrote:
           | But game theory also presumes a closed, on-the-record world.
           | E.g., it doesn't handle dumping (loss as strategic gain)
           | without opening the scope of game, but there are no scope
           | bounds since value of any type is exchangeable (land for
           | peace...). So game theory like newtonian physics only helps
           | in narrowly constrained systems, but none of the real systems
           | where help is needed are so constrained (banking laws
           | notwithstanding).
        
         | hoofish wrote:
         | That is in classical game theory, in CGT, it is assumed the
         | actors are both rational and irrational
        
       | elif wrote:
       | It seems like the AI decision making is 'immutable' but in the
       | end it will always come down to training data
        
         | upghost wrote:
         | this is a so-often overlooked point.
        
         | noduerme wrote:
         | It's worse than that. The entire notion of an independent
         | arbiter is deceptive at best, because the decision making will
         | always come down to how the questions are framed.
         | 
         | The claim here is that an automated process backed with enough
         | data and computational power can distill any of the world's
         | most intractable conflicts and come up with a compromise immune
         | to "toxicity" and human bad-faith. I'd submit that in any
         | conflict in which at least one actor is acting in bad faith to
         | begin with, in the absence of an overriding ethical framework,
         | any such compromise would result in a worse outcome than making
         | a decision that one side was right and the other wrong. It's
         | the compromise between hens and wolves.
        
           | hoofish wrote:
           | In CGT, there is no third party arbitrator, no admin, the
           | resolution is reached player to player. thx for response
        
           | w10-1 wrote:
           | If/since the universe of human bad faith is finite, it does
           | seem possible (and useful) to detect all such forms in
           | transactions that are on the record.
           | 
           | This won't solve out-of-band corruption and might indeed
           | increase its value, and hence increase the value of
           | participating in a corruption network.
           | 
           | gosh darn unintended consequences...
        
           | hoofish wrote:
           | You're really way out of left field. You are welcome to a
           | live demonstration of how CGT works.
        
         | hoofish wrote:
         | in CGT, humans make the final decisions, it is a game designed
         | for humans first, AI just came later
        
         | hoofish wrote:
         | No, that is a misunderstanding. No third party or no AI, or AI
         | training data, is used to arrive at a consensus decision,
         | humans have over-ride in the system.
        
       | zug_zug wrote:
       | I'm having trouble understanding all the upvotes for a wall of
       | buzzwords from across-fields. Would love to understand what this
       | even is in plain english if somebody has the time.
        
         | hoofish wrote:
         | thx for response. I think it is pretty straight forward on the
         | site. project is in stealth mode. "Conversational Game Theory"
         | is pretty straightforward.
        
           | cowpig wrote:
           | Stealth mode project that is publishing whitepapers to HN and
           | replying in comments about its stealthiness?
        
             | Mtinie wrote:
             | Double-secret misdirection. The new stealth!
        
               | hoofish wrote:
               | I think it is silly to load everything up with so much
               | suspicion.
        
             | hoofish wrote:
             | yes, i often seed on social media as the project evolves to
             | get feedback.
        
             | hoofish wrote:
             | The company is in stealth mode, thanks for clarifying.
        
         | lugao wrote:
         | Exactly! And it was obviouslly written by (or with help of) a
         | LLM. The first definition is even gramatically incorrect! Lets
         | see what gemini thinks of the first paragraph if I force it to
         | criticize it:
         | 
         | https://g.co/gemini/share/97c1d475aae1
        
           | ASalazarMX wrote:
           | Besides the obvious irony of criticizing a suspect LLM work
           | and then asking another LLM to criticize it to prove it, your
           | question was loaded:
           | 
           | "Explain why this paragraph is contrived and grammatically
           | incorrect: [..]"
           | 
           | Current LLMs are trained to follow your leash.
        
           | Asraelite wrote:
           | I don't see any grammatical errors, just some possible
           | missing punctuation. The arguments Gemini gives are just
           | opinions about stylistic choices. Could you point out the
           | specific grammar mistakes you see?
        
             | hoofish wrote:
             | These are just grumpy posters, while I was not expecting
             | the post to get all of this attention, its usually the ones
             | who are reactive or trolling who respond here. They want to
             | find so many mistakes just so they don't have to admit to
             | themselves that they don't understand what the project is
             | or how it works.
        
               | mistermann wrote:
               | You've taken this ubiquitous phenomenon into account in
               | the design I hope?
        
           | hoofish wrote:
           | Our entire system is trained on LLMs, so yes LLMs are used to
           | write summaries. Thanks for the feedback.
        
           | bongodongobob wrote:
           | Now ask it why the paragraph is well written.
        
         | sdwr wrote:
         | It's saying, "AI needs consistent, scored rules for
         | communication, so it can self-train being a person the same way
         | it self-trains winning games of Go" (sure).
         | 
         | Then it says "we have those rules" (they don't) "and they work
         | great" (they don't) "and you can't see them" (sure).
        
           | hoofish wrote:
           | Hi. Thank you for your response. All of our work is
           | transparent, if there is something you want to see or know,
           | reach out on linked in or twitter. Other than that I think
           | you are misrepresenting what is on the site, it says nothing
           | of what you write
        
             | mistermann wrote:
             | The comments in this thread are such a fantastic
             | demonstration of the dire need for tools and technology
             | like this....and a good learning experience for the devs!!
        
             | sdwr wrote:
             | You built a platform to facilitate and track discussions,
             | for people and AI.
             | 
             | That's great, and maybe it's the future of harnessing AI,
             | but it's not:
             | 
             | - Conversational Game Theory
             | 
             | - a dynamic equilibrium between computational, cognitive
             | and psychological states
             | 
             | - a public good that functions as an enhancement layer
             | 
             | - immutable to subversion from bad faith actors
        
         | hoofish wrote:
         | Hi, thanks for your response. If you reach out to the founder
         | on linked in, he is happy to give you a demonstration.
        
         | hoofish wrote:
         | There isn't any buzz words being used, you could simply look up
         | with the words mean if you don't understand them.
         | 
         | "Conversational" is plain english for conversation. "Game
         | Theory" implies what it says.
         | 
         | Which words made it so challenging? Let me know and I can
         | explain.
        
       | jsemrau wrote:
       | Game Theory and Agent Reasoning?
        
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