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

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.