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arXiv · 2501.18455

Conversation Games and a Strategic View of the Turing Test

Abstract

Although many game-theoretic models replicate real interactions that often rely on natural language, explicit study of games where language is central to strategic interaction remains limited. This paper introduces the \emph{conversation game}, a multi-stage, extensive-form game based on linguistic strategic interaction. We focus on a subset of the games, called verdict games. In a verdict game, two players alternate to contribute to a conversation, which is evaluated at each stage by a non-strategic judge who may render a conclusive binary verdict, or a decision to continue the dialogue. The game ends once a limit is reached or a verdict is given. We show many familiar processes, such as interrogation or a court process fall under this category. We also, show that the Turing test is an instance of verdict game, and discuss the significance of a strategic view of the Turing test in the age of advanced AI deception. We show the practical relevance of the proposed concepts by simulation experiments, and show that a strategic agent outperforms a naive agent by a high margin.

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Kaveh Aryan. 2025-01-30. Conversation Games and a Strategic View of the Turing Test. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18455

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