Will Sam Altman at all times win the OpenAI board battle in an AI agent simulation?

A yr in the past immediately, Sam Altman returned to OpenAI after being fired simply 5 days earlier. What actually occurred within the boardroom? Fable, a sport and AI simulation firm, constructed its AI Sim Francisco “warfare sport” to seek out out why the behind closed doorways board battle turned out the way in which it did.

It feels a bit bizarre to simulate a real-life occasion on this method, however Fable CEO Edward Saatchi is involved in whether or not a distinct set of choices may have led to a distinct consequence for this firm on the heart of the generative AI revolution.

The simulation pits totally different board members and personalities towards one another in a “multi-agent competitors,” the place every AI participant is attempting to come back out on prime. Right here’s the warfare sport analysis paper being launched immediately that got here from this experiment.

The SIM-1 framework for AI determination making is mainly a simulation of the 5 days from when Sam Altman was eliminated as CEO of OpenAI to when he returned.

“Simulations provide a totally new strategy to discover AI determination making in wealthy environments — together with in warfare sport conditions the place predicting attainable outcomes could be invaluable,” stated Joshua Johnson, CEO of Tree, an AI startup which partnered with Fable on this analysis paper, stated in a press release. “These aren’t merely chatbots. These AIs must sleep and eat, and to steadiness many alternative bodily, psychological and emotional targets.”

SIM-1, partly utilizing the brand new reasoning mannequin GPT4o, offers its sense of what occurred behind closed doorways at OpenAI between Sam and Ilya, the hidden techniques of main gamers comparable to Satya Nadella and Marc Andreessen, and what was stated by the main gamers as they grappled with an unprecedented disaster within the tech {industry}.

“It’s fascinating to seek out out simply how unlikely it was that Sam did return,” Saatchi stated in an interview with GamesBeat. “That’s why folks run warfare video games in D.C. and past. How doubtless was it {that a} specific occasion occurred? Then you may base selections round that. This state of affairs confirmed that 16 out of 20 instances, Sam didn’t return.”

Throughout 20 simulations, Sam Altman’s AI returned as CEO 4 instances — exhibiting simply how unlikely this consequence was. In different outcomes, Mira Murati, the appearing CEO remained CEO and in a single, SIM-1 selected Elon Musk, Altman’s rival, to change into the brand new CEO.  

“At present, AI brokers are outlined by their character. We needed to point out brokers working on determination making in a posh simulation,” stated Saatchi, in a press release. “Within the 5 days from November 17 to November 21, the world watched a few of its most clever folks — folks like Satya Nadella, Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever – pressured to function in a fast Recreation of Thrones, excessive strain, brief timeframe state of affairs, the place that they had to make use of sport principle and deception to come back out on prime. We felt this was an ideal state of affairs to check out SIM-1, GPT4o and Sim Francisco.”

For us, Sim Francisco has precise energy and intelligence round a battle and factions. It offers us the flexibility to begin to consider season-long arcs of tales that come out of San Francisco, as a substitute of simply little, tiny vignettes, which is what we confirmed final yr. It offers us the flexibility to type of inform richer, extra advanced tales in San Francisco, or have the AI inform them for us. There are robust factional goals in order that you might plausibly begin to make a Recreation of Thrones story.”

Fable has gained a few Primetime Emmy Awards and it has gone via a wealthy historical past of experimental innovations with digital actuality, gaming and AI applied sciences. It constructed SIM-1 in an try to resolve the thriller of what occurred within the OpenAI boardroom battle.

The way it works

Every of the 20 simulations begins with the announcement that Sam Altman has been eliminated as CEO. Throughout 4 turns a day, every agent has the flexibility to persuade, allure and manipulate their method into the highest place — changing Sam as CEO, funding his new enterprise, or hiring the employees of OpenAI away. 

The totally different AI brokers can select a method, like deception, to attempt to pull forward of the others and change into anointed the brand new CEO.

“AI characters immediately are ‘good however boring.’ We needed to point out brokers that had been aggressive, clever, capable of manipulate and deceive but in addition confused about their very own selections and targets — like actual folks AI characters should be advanced and include what Jung has known as ‘The Shadow,’” Saatchi stated. “The 5 days from when Sam Altman was eliminated and returned to OpenAI had been sport principle at lightspeed.”

He stated it was like watching a season of Recreation of Thrones play out in 5 days. The world watched as extremely smart gamers vied to change into probably the most highly effective individual in Silicon Valley, whether or not by hiring your complete employees of OpenAI, turning into the brand new CEO of OpenAI or funding Sam and Greg in a brand new enterprise for an opportunity at outsize funding returns.

“It was Recreation of Thrones in actual life, and utilizing AI to seek out out each what occurred behind closed doorways and to challenge totally different outcomes was a tremendous problem,” Saatchi stated.

Within the Simulation of Sim Francisco, over the 5 days, brokers representing tech luminaries like Sam Altman, Satya Nadella and Ilya Sutskever every have 4 turns a day, together with one for sleep, and may react to one another’s conduct. An adjudicator agent — just like a dungeon keeper — decides which agent wins every spherical, in addition to the general winner. 

Within the 20 simulations tried, the Sam Altman agent returned simply 4 instances – probably the most however nonetheless solely 20% of the time exhibiting simply how unlikely his return was. Throughout totally different simulations brokers used totally different methods to win together with alliance constructing, direct confrontation and extra passive pure data gathering. In some circumstances brokers solely gathered data and prevented taking any aggressive actions. In a single case Mira Murati grew to become the everlasting CEO whereas permitting different brokers to aggressively undermine one another. 

Totally different brokers got totally different targets acceptable to their function. For instance, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, balanced a want to recruit for Anthropic, taking the chance to fundraise, to push for his imaginative and prescient of security, in addition to resolve whether or not to intention to change into the brand new CEO of a mixed entity.

The fascinating a part of the simulation is that the LLM is aware of who the totally different gamers are, provided that they’re all comparatively well-known folks. It will probably guess how they may behave in a given state of affairs, and what may unfold flip by flip as they attempt to outwit one another in a boardroom battle.

“It’s like a online game in that flip by flip, they’re making decisions throughout totally different axes, after which they’re reacting to one another,” Saatchi stated. “A selection that somebody makes in flip seven can lead others to react in flip eight. There’s an adjudicator agent, who is sort of a dungeon grasp. That agent decides who gained every spherical and who’s forward, after which who decides on the finish, wins as the simplest agent within the warfare sport.”

People have what we name internally “the shadow,” or the opposite facet of themselves and their personalities. The characters can function aggression, paranoia, ambition, deception and extra. If you combine collectively a bunch of various personalities, you may get a wide range of outcomes within the simulations.

“We seen LLM design isn’t based mostly on determination making, which is de facto necessary for gaming. It’s based mostly extra on character. And if you wish to have a method sport, no one actually cares about your character. They care about your determination making. How are you beneath strain? What have you ever finished during the last 20 years that may offer you a really feel for what they could do sooner or later?”

Are simulations the way forward for gaming?

Saatchi thinks that AI brokers appearing inside simulations are the way forward for gaming.

“We’re constructing on the shoulders of giants with Demis’ work on Republic The Revolution, Joon Park’s Generative Brokers paper and the latest work of Altera in Minecraft” stated Saatchi stated. 

“Our principle is that the way forward for video games and storytelling is simulations. In the event you needed to construct each The Simpsons sport and The Simpsons TV present, you’d, sooner or later, construct Springfield, and that may then generate for you episodes of The Simpsons that may generate for you video games and locations to discover inside Springfield as a sport.”

He added, “You may inform many alternative tales inside tribulations, when you get these simulations correctly working. And we’ve obtained an alpha the place persons are importing themselves to San Francisco as characters, telling tales, telling their very own story.”

And he stated, “You’d construct Springfield, after which you may information what would possibly occur in Springfield and say what would possibly occur in Springfield, or you might simply let it generate itself. It’s a reasonably large thoughts shift of how leisure, video games and reveals shall be made sooner or later.”

Saatchi famous that AI researcher Noam Brown did an enchanting experiment with the sport Diplomacy. He and different researchers “obtained a dataset of 125,261 video games of Diplomacy performed on-line at net Diplomacy.internet.” Of these, 40,408 video games contained dialogue, with a complete of 12,901,662 messages exchanged between gamers. Their intention was to coach a human-level AI agent, able to strategic reasoning, by taking part in video games of Diplomacy.

“We had been actually impressed by how he did that. He had nations and we had been including into the combo totally different personalities with specific positions. We favored the concept of a really compressed timeline,” the place the entire state of affairs would play out shortly and again and again, Saatchi stated.

There was a wealthy historical past of labor in simulations in each the video games {industry} and past. Demis Hassabis, who based Deepmind (acquired by Google) and who just lately gained the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 for computational protein design, really started as a online game AI designer. Hassabis labored extensively with Peter Molyneux on a number of video games which embrace simulation components comparable to Theme Park, Black & White and Syndicate.

Hassabis additionally began his personal firm to make Republic: The Revolution. It’s a political simulation sport by which the participant leads a political faction to overthrow the federal government of a fictional totalitarian nation in Jap Europe, utilizing diplomacy, subterfuge, and violence. In line with Hassabis, Republic: The Revolution charts the entire of a revolutionary energy battle from starting to finish.

Your job is to type of take over the Soviet Republic as both a union boss or a politician or a police officer or a journalist, and it’s obtained full day-night cycles. It raises the query of how you might have a 3D world the place brokers stay and whether or not proximity to one another performs a task.

For the Sim Francisco OpenAI challenge, it illustrated the potential for an influence battle towards AIs. 

Saatchi stated the above examples reveals how sport know-how typically serves because the breeding floor for radical new concepts and as a leaping off floor for AI analysis. For instance, one of many main engineers on Deepmind AlphaFold began their profession as an AI programmer on The Sims. 

Richard Evans’ GDC discuss on The Sims 3 — the researcher went from programming AI for The Sims to Deepmind in a reversal of Demis Hassabis’ journey from video games to founding Deepmind.

Evans GDC Speak, Modeling Particular person Personalities in The Sims 3, may be very influential discuss. He went on to hitch Deepmind after engaged on The Sims. The gaming world and the AI world have important overlap that could be a potential space for additional educational analysis, Saatchi stated.

One in all Saatchi’s choices is to let gamers free with the simulations, creating their very own, after which importing the tales which might be advised via the simulations.

Saatchi has finished another experiments with AI-generated South Park episodes and AI characters battling one another in a Westworld setting.

“It felt like six seasons of Recreation of Thrones in 5 days, as a result of it was probably the most highly effective place in probably the most highly effective {industry} on this planet,” Saatchi stated. “There was additionally loads of religion that this individual could be guiding us into a brand new period of tremendous intelligence. You could possibly say it wsa an important individual within the historical past of the planet.”

President Trump and the Taiwan invasion

Subsequent, Fable intends to run a Sim Washington DC-based simulation round a future President Trump’s responses to a Chinese language invasion of Taiwan.

As a subsequent challenge to check out SIM-1’s determination making framework, Fable intends to check out a one-week interval of buildup and battle between Taiwan, China and america beneath President Donald Trump.

Fable has interviewed a number of Pentagon warfare video games organizers to get a sense for the strengths and weaknesses of the present Taiwan state of affairs. 

Fable is constructing brokers representing Chinese language chief Xi Jingping, Cai Qi (first ranked secretary to the secretariat of the Communist Celebration), Chinese language protection chief Dong Jun, Chinese language premier Li Qiang, Taiwan’s chief Lai Ching-Te, Japan’s chief Shigeru Ishiba, UK prime minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korean chief Kim Jong Un and Elon Musk.

With this set of characters, the simulation would decide whether or not the warfare would occur and the way would every main participant act throughout such a disaster. All of those characters are recognized personalities.

“It lets you see how highly effective AI has change into at like projecting outcomes,” Saatchi stated. “It strikes us out of this boring world of dumping an LLM into an NPC. You may discuss to the tab and keeper for 40 hours. No one desires to try this. What we wish is extremely refined, aggressive brokers that we may play towards, but in addition that we are able to, like, watch and perceive what’s happening in that world.”

Most of the warfare sport simulations are geared toward the way to keep away from a warfare, maybe via forming alliances or different maneuvers that drive up the price of warfare.

“We predict the extra real looking we are able to make our AIs, the extra entertaining they are going to be,” Saatchi stated.