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Oral
in
Workshop: Towards Safe & Trustworthy Agents

Simulation System Towards Solving Societal-Scale Manipulation

Sneheel Sarangi · Maximilian Puelma Touzel · Austin Welch · Gayatri K · Dan Zhao · Zachary Yang · Hao Yu · Ethan Kosak-Hine · Tom Gibbs · Andreea Musulan · Camille Thibault · Reihaneh Rabbany · Jean-François Godbout · Kellin Pelrine


Abstract:

The rise of AI-driven manipulation poses significant risks to societal trust and democratic processes. Yet, studying these effects in real-world 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.

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