Sneheel Sarangi

Austin Welch

Gayatri Krishnakumar

Dan Zhao

Hao Yu

Ethan Kosak-Hine

Tom Gibbs

Busra Tugce Gurbuz

The rise of AI-driven manipulation poses significant risks to societal trust and democratic processes. Yet, studying these effects in real-w… (see more)orld settings at scale is ethically and logistically impractical, highlighting a need for simulation tools that can model these dynamics in controlled settings to enable experimentation with possible defenses. We present a simulation environment designed to address this. We elaborate upon the Concordia framework that simulates offline, `real life' activity by adding online interactions to the simulation through social media with the integration of a Mastodon server. We improve simulation efficiency and information flow, and add a set of measurement tools, particularly longitudinal surveys. We demonstrate the simulator with a tailored example in which we track agents' political positions and show how partisan manipulation of agents can affect election results.

2024-10-17

ArXiv (preprint)

doi.org

arxiv.org

A Simulation System Towards Solving Societal-Scale Manipulation

Maximilian Puelma Touzel

Austin Welch

Gayatri K

Dan Zhao

Hao Yu

Ethan Kosak-Hine

Tom Gibbs

Busra Tugce Gurbuz

The rise of AI-driven manipulation poses significant risks to societal trust and democratic processes. Yet, studying these effects in real-w… (see more)orld settings at scale is ethically and logistically impractical, highlighting a need for simulation tools that can model these dynamics in controlled settings to enable experimentation with possible defenses. We present a simulation environment designed to address this. We elaborate upon the Concordia framework that simulates offline, `real life' activity by adding online interactions to the simulation through social media with the integration of a Mastodon server. We improve simulation efficiency and information flow, and add a set of measurement tools, particularly longitudinal surveys. We demonstrate the simulator with a tailored example in which we track agents' political positions and show how partisan manipulation of agents can affect election results.

2024-10-17

ArXiv (preprint)

doi.org

arxiv.org

Simulation System Towards Solving Societal-Scale Manipulation

Maximilian Puelma Touzel

Austin Welch

Gayatri K

Dan Zhao

Hao Yu

Tom Gibbs

Ethan Kosak-Hine

Busra Tugce Gurbuz

The rise of AI-driven manipulation poses significant risks to societal trust and democratic processes. Yet, studying these effects in real-w… (see more)orld settings at scale is ethically and logistically impractical, highlighting a need for simulation tools that can model these dynamics in controlled settings to enable experimentation with possible defenses. We present a simulation environment designed to address this. We elaborate upon the Concordia framework that simulates offline, `real life' activity by adding online interactions to the simulation through social media with the integration of a Mastodon server. Through a variety of means we then improve simulation efficiency and information flow, and add a set of measurement tools, particularly longitudinal surveys of the agents' political positions. We demonstrate the simulator with a tailored example of how partisan manipulation of agents can affect election results.

2024-10-12

NeurIPS.cc/2024/Workshop/SafeGenAi (poster)

openreview.net

Simulation System Towards Solving Societal-Scale Manipulation

Maximilian Puelma Touzel

Austin Welch

Gayatri K

Dan Zhao

Hao Yu

Tom Gibbs

Ethan Kosak-Hine

Busra Tugce Gurbuz