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arXiv · 2504.16122

SOTOPIA-S4: a user-friendly system for flexible, customizable, and large-scale social simulation

Xuhui Zhou·Zhe Su·Sophie Feng·Jiaxu Zhou·Jen-tse Huang·Hsien-Te Kao·Spencer Lynch·Svitlana Volkova·Tongshuang Sherry Wu·Anita Woolley·Hao Zhu·Maarten Sap
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Abstract

Social simulation through large language model (LLM) agents is a promising approach to explore and validate hypotheses related to social science questions and LLM agents behavior. We present SOTOPIA-S4, a fast, flexible, and scalable social simulation system that addresses the technical barriers of current frameworks while enabling practitioners to generate multi-turn and multi-party LLM-based interactions with customizable evaluation metrics for hypothesis testing. SOTOPIA-S4 comes as a pip package that contains a simulation engine, an API server with flexible RESTful APIs for simulation management, and a web interface that enables both technical and non-technical users to design, run, and analyze simulations without programming. We demonstrate the usefulness of SOTOPIA-S4 with two use cases involving dyadic hiring negotiation and multi-party planning scenarios.

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Xuhui Zhou, Zhe Su, Sophie Feng, Jiaxu Zhou, Jen-tse Huang, Hsien-Te Kao, Spencer Lynch, Svitlana Volkova, Tongshuang Sherry Wu, Anita Woolley, Hao Zhu, Maarten Sap. 2025-04-19. SOTOPIA-S4: a user-friendly system for flexible, customizable, and large-scale social simulation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.16122

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