Carambola: Enforcing Relationships Between Values in Value-Sensitive Agent Design

Abstract

Carambola is a text-based strategy game that operationalizes the Theory of Basic Values (TBV) to model the motivations of its non-player characters (NPC) and the dilemmas it presents to players. The player takes on the role of the Emperor of a nation, making a series of executive decisions while noting the subsequent reactions of their NPC advisors. After a fixed number of rounds in which they choose actions, their NPC advisors vote on whether they should dethrone the player based on the affinity they have with the other subjects of the game. Advisor affinity is affected by the Emperor’s actions, which each harm and promote a subset of their values. Our implementation of the TBV is a geometric interpretation that enforces restrictions on the attitudes that agents can have toward the values. We give a brief overview of the theory, and then describe our implementation and our plans for evaluating how this usage of the TBV affects the advisors’ believability.