Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the (...) medium of agency. Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

Games occupy a unique and valuable place in our lives. Game designers do not simply create worlds; they design temporary selves. Game designers set what our motivations are in the game and what our abilities will be. Thus: games are the art form of agency. By working in the artistic medium of agency, games can offer a distinctive aesthetic value. They support aesthetic experiences of deciding and doing. -/- And the fact that we play games shows (...) something remarkable about us. Our agency is more fluid than we might have thought. In playing a game, we take on temporary ends; we submerge ourselves temporarily in an alternate agency. Games turn out to be a vessel for communicating different modes of agency, for writing them down and storing them. Games create an archive of agencies. And playing games is how we familiarize ourselves with different modes of agency, which helps us develop our capacity to fluidly change our own style of agency. (shrink)

This article explores the nature and theoretical import of a hitherto neglected class of fictions which we term ‘self-involving interactive fictions’. SIIFs are interactive fictions, but they differ from standard examples of interactive fictions by being, in some important sense, about those who consume them. In order to better understand the nature of SIIFs, and the ways in which they differ from other fictions, we focus primarily on the most prominent example of the category: video-game fictions. We argue that appreciating (...) the self-involving nature of video-game fictions is key to understanding various otherwise puzzling phenomena concerning the ways in which consumers respond to them. Video-game fictions are, however, far from being the only extant example of this class; and we suggest that the recent philosophical interest in video games would be better focused on the wider class of self-involving interactive fictions. (shrink)

In the philosophy of technology after the empirical turn, little attention has been paid to language and its relation to technology. In this programmatic and explorative paper, it is proposed to use the later Wittgenstein, not only to pay more attention to language use in philosophy of technology, but also to rethink technology itself—at least technology in its aspect of tool, technology-in-use. This is done by outlining a working account of Wittgenstein’s view of language and by then applying that account (...) to technology—turning around Wittgenstein’s metaphor of the toolbox. Using Wittgenstein’s concepts of language games and form of life and coining the term ‘technology games’, the paper proposes and argues for a use-oriented, holistic, transcendental, social, and historical approach to technology which is empirically but also normatively sensitive, and which takes into account implicit knowledge and know-how. It gives examples of interaction with social robots to support the relevance of this project for understanding and evaluating today’s technologies, makes comparisons with authors in philosophy of technology such as Winner and Ihde, and sketches the contours of a phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology use that may help us to understand but also to gain a more critical relation to specific uses of concrete technologies in everyday contexts. Ultimately, given the holism argued for, it also promises a more critical relation to the games and forms of life technologies are embedded in—to the ways we do things. (shrink)

We discuss games of both perfect and imperfect information at two levels of structural detail: players’ local actions, and their global powers for determining outcomes of the game. We propose matching logical languages for both. In particular, at the ‘action level’, imperfect information games naturally model a combined ‘dynamic-epistemic language’ – and we find correspondences between special axioms and particular modes of playing games with their information dynamics. At the ‘outcome level’, we present suitable notions of game (...) equivalence, plus some simple representation results. (shrink)

Using Bernard Suits’s brilliant analysis (contra Wittgenstein) of playing a game, this paper examines the intrinsic value of game-playing. It argues that two elements in Suits’s analysis make success in games difficult, which is one ground of value, while a third involves choosing a good activity for the property that makes it good, which is a further ground. The paper concludes by arguing that game-playing is the paradigm modern (Marx, Nietzsche) as against classical (Aristotle) value: since its goal is (...) intrinsically trivial, its value is entirely one of process rather than product, journey rather than destination. (shrink)

This article explores the nature and theoretical import of a hitherto neglected class of fictions which we term ‘self-involving interactive fictions’. SIIFs are interactive fictions, but they differ from standard examples of interactive fictions by being, in some important sense, about those who consume them. In order to better understand the nature of SIIFs, and the ways in which they differ from other fictions, we focus primarily on the most prominent example of the category: video-game fictions. We argue that appreciating (...) the self-involving nature of video-game fictions is key to understanding various otherwise puzzling phenomena concerning the ways in which consumers respond to them. Video-game fictions are, however, far from being the only extant example of this class; and we suggest that the recent philosophical interest in video games would be better focused on the wider class of self-involving interactive fictions. (shrink)

We analyze extensive games as interactive process models, using modallanguages plus matching notions of bisimulation as varieties of gameequivalences. Our technical results show how to fit existing modalnotions into this new setting.

We represent truth sets for a variety of the well known semantic theories of truth as those sets consisting of all sentences for which a player has a winning strategy in an infinite two person game. The classifications of the games considered here are simple, those over the natural model of arithmetic being all within the arithmetical class of $\Sum_{3}^{0}$.

In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. "Nonsense," says the sensible Bernard Suits: "playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing games (...) is a central part of the ideal of human existence, so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia. Originally published in 1978, The Grasshopper is now re-issued with a new introduction by Thomas Hurka and with additional material (much of it previously unpublished) by the author, in which he expands on the ideas put forward in The Grasshopper and answers some questions that have been raised by critics. (shrink)

This paper describes a teaching methodology whereby students can gain practical experience of ethical decision-making in the engineering design process. We first argue for the necessity to teach a ‘practical’ understanding of ethical issues in engineering education along with the usual theoretical or hypothetical approaches. We then show how this practical understanding can be achieved by using a collaborative design game, describing how, for example, the concept of responsibility can be explored from this practical basis. We conclude that the use (...) of games in design education can provide an excellent basis for discussing practical and ethical reasoning during the process of design. (shrink)

In previous work I’ve defended an interest-relative theory of belief. This paper continues the defence. It has four aims. -/- 1. To offer a new kind of reason for being unsatis ed with the simple Lockean reduction of belief to credence. 2. To defend the legitimacy of appealing to credences in a theory of belief. 3. To illustrate the importance of theoretical, as well as practical, interests in an interest-relative account of belief. 4. To revise my account to cover propositions (...) that are practically and theoretically irrelevant to the agent. (shrink)

[Thomas Hurka] Using Bernard Suits's brilliant analysis of playing a game, this paper examines the intrinsic value of game-playing. It argues that two elements in Suits's analysis make success in games difficult, which is one ground of value, while a third involves choosing a good activity for the property that makes it good, which is a further ground. The paper concludes by arguing that game-playing is the paradigm modern as against classical value: since its goal is intrinsically trivial, its (...) value is entirely one of process rather than product, journey rather than destination. /// [John Tasioulas] This paper contends that play, not achievement, is the primary intrinsic good internal to game-playing, and supports a relational, as opposed to formal, conception of achievement. (shrink)

This is an Element surveying the most important literature using game theory and evolutionary game theory to shed light on questions in the philosophy of biology. There are two branches of literature that the book focuses on. It begins with a short introduction to game theory and evolutionary game theory. It then turns to working using signaling games to explore questions related to communication, meaning, language, and reference. The second part of the book addresses prosociality - strategic behavior that (...) contributes to the successful functioning of social groups - using the prisoner's dilemma, stag hunt, and bargaining games. (shrink)

We present a game semantics for Linear Logic, in which formulas denote games and proofs denote winning strategies. We show that our semantics yields a categorical model of Linear Logic and prove full completeness for Multiplicative Linear Logic with the MIX rule: every winning strategy is the denotation of a unique cut-free proof net. A key role is played by the notion of history-free strategy; strong connections are made between history-free strategies and the Geometry of Interaction. Our semantics incorporates (...) a natural notion of polarity, leading to a refined treatment of the additives. We make comparisons with related work by Joyal, Blass, et al. (shrink)

We present a logic-based formalism for modeling ofdialogues between intelligent and autonomous software agents,building on a theory of abstract dialogue games which we present.The formalism enables representation of complex dialogues assequences of moves in a combination of dialogue games, and allowsdialogues to be embedded inside one another. The formalism iscomputational and its modular nature enables different types ofdialogues to be represented.

In the standard formulation of game theory, agents use mixed strategies in the form of objective and probabilistically precise devices to conceal their actions. We introduce the larger set of probabilistically imprecise devices and study the consequences for the basic results on normal form games. While Nash equilibria remain equilibria in the extended game, there arise new Ellsberg equilibria with distinct outcomes, as we illustrate by negotiation games with three players. We characterize Ellsberg equilibria in two-person conflict and (...) coordination games. These equilibria turn out to be related to experimental deviations from Nash equilibrium play. (shrink)

A philosophical theory of explanation should provide solutions to a series of problems, both descriptive and normative. The aim of this essay is to establish the claim that this can be best done if one theorizes in terms of explanatory games rather than focusing on the explication of the concept of explanation. The position that is adopted is that of an explanatory pluralism and it is elaborated in terms of the rules that incorporate the normative standards that guide the (...) processes of discovery and justification of explanations as well as the modes of their communication, dissemination, and adoption. They constitute the rules of the explanatory game that the participants are playing. The philosophical project consists in describing and normatively appraising the rules that constitute these games. (shrink)

In this paper, I use Thi Nguyen's analysis of striving games to sketch an outline of the structure of our agency at large. Following Nguyen, I argue that our agency is layered and fluid. Scarcity of deliberative resources and the need to coordinate multiple ends require us to introduce intermediate ends that are held temporarily fixed in guiding our conduct. This fixity is made possible by our ability to be absorbed in the pursuit of those intermediate ends as if (...) they were final. We normally resist the temptation constantly to consider our practical circumstances outside of those pursuits, which would induce a constant reassessment of our plans. But the temporary single-mindedness of intermediate ends does not make us stubbornly inflexible. Our agency is fluid: we are able smoothly to switch in an out of various layers. I then show that there are two kinds of layers, horizontal segments and vertical strata, and 'leisure niches' where we can temporarily acquire disposable ends such as those of games. These niches allow for the sandboxing of ends, which can then be pursued in isolation from other enduring ends. I conclude with a discussion of the further complexity in layering required to account for the characteristic motivational inversion of striving games. (shrink)

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about (...) the ontology of the work and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

Why computer games can be ethical, how players use their ethical values in gameplay, and the implications for game design.

In this paper I will discuss why (un) marked expressionstypically get an (un)marked interpretation: Horn''sdivision of pragmatic labor. It is argued that it is aconventional fact that we use language this way.This convention will be explained in terms ofthe equilibria of signalling games introduced byLewis (1969), but now in an evolutionary setting. Iwill also relate this signalling game analysis withParikh''s (1991, 2000, 2001) game-theoretical analysis ofsuccessful communication, which in turn is compared withBlutner''s: 2000) bi-directional optimality theory.

Formal dialogue games have been studied in philosophy since at least the time of Aristotle. Recently they have been applied in various contexts in computer science and artificial intelligence, particularly as the basis for interaction between autonomous software agents. We review these applications and discuss the many open research questions and challenges at this exciting interface between philosophy and computer science.

Ethics education can potentially be supplemented through the use of video games. This article proposes a novel framework, which helps educators choose games to be used for ethics education purposes. The EPIC Framework is derived from a number of classic moral development, learning, and ethical decision-making models, including frameworks and theories associated with games and ethics, as well as prior empirical and theoretical research literature. The EPIC Framework consists of seven ethics education goals, and 12 strategies associated (...) with ethics education, which are also present in video games. Each of the framework’s categories is described in detail, and the limitations of the framework are also discussed. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that games like chess, languages like English, and speech acts like assertion are constituted by rules. Lots of others disagree. To argue over this productively, it would be first useful to know what it would be for these things to be rule-constituted. Searle famously claimed in Speech Acts that rules constitute things in the sense that they make possible the performance of actions related to those things (Searle 1969). On this view, rules constitute games, languages, (...) and speech acts in the sense that they make possible playing them, speaking them and performing them. This raises the question what it is to perform rule-constituted actions (e. g. play, speak, assert) and the question what makes constitutive rules distinctive such that only they make possible the performance of new actions (e. g. playing). In this paper I will criticize Searle’s answers to these questions. However, my main aim is to develop a better view, explain how it works in the case of each of games, language, and assertion and illustrate its appeal by showing how it enables rule-based views of these things to respond to various objections. (shrink)

Video games and virtual worlds play substantial roles in contemporary transhumanism. Many transhumanists appreciate the freedom and power that accompany these digital landscapes and recognize that they can promote transhumanist ways of thinking beyond the borders of explicitly transhumanist groups. Video games and virtual worlds enable transcendence through their design and contribute to transhumanism through the options they enable and the influence they have. Because of their significant place in transhumanism, video games and virtual worlds are thus (...) important to the study of religion and science in the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

A systematic, rigorous, comprehensive, and unified overview of evolutionary game theory.

In response to those who argue for ‘property cluster’ views of natural kinds, I use evolutionary models of sim-max games to assess the claim that linguistic terms will appropriately track sets of objects that cluster in property spaces. As I show, there are two sorts of ways this can fail to happen. First, evolved terms that do respect property structure in some senses can be conventional nonetheless. Second, and more crucially, because the function of linguistic terms is to facilitate (...) successful action in the world, when such success is based on something other than property clusters, we should not expect our terms to track those clusters. The models help make this second point salient by highlighting a dubious assumption underlying some versions of the cluster kinds view—that property clusters lead to successful generalization and induction in a straightforward way. As I point out, those who support property cluster kinds as natural can revert to a promiscuous realism in response to these observations. (shrink)

Contents. Introduction. 1. Preliminaries. 2. Normal Form Games. 3. Extensive Games. 4. Applications of Game Theory. 5. The Methodology of Game Theory. Conclusion. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. Does game theory—the mathematical theory of strategic interaction—provide genuine explanations of human behaviour? Can game theory be used in economic consultancy or other normative contexts? Explaining Games: The Epistemic Programme in Game Theory—the first monograph on the philosophy of game theory—is an attempt to combine insights from epistemic logic and the philosophy (...) of science to investigate the applicability of game theory in such fields as economics, philosophy and strategic consultancy. I prove new mathematical theorems about the beliefs, desires and rationality principles of individual human beings, and explore in detail the logical form of game theory as it is used in explanatory and normative contexts. I argue that game theory reduces to rational choice theory if used as an explanatory device, and that game theory is nonsensical if used as a normative device. A provocative account of the history of game theory reveals that this is not bad news for all of game theory, though. Two central research programmes in game theory tried to find the ultimate characterisation of strategic interaction between rational agents. Yet, while the Nash Equilibrium Refinement Programme has done badly thanks to such research habits as overmathematisation, model-tinkering and introversion, the Epistemic Programme, I argue, has been rather successful in achieving this aim. "The 'epistemic' approach to game theory has emerged over the past twenty-five years. What is this approach? How does it differ from the conventional equilibrium-based approach to game theory? What have been its strengths and weaknesses to date? To find out, read this comprehensive and excellently written account". Adam Brandenburger, J. P. Valles Professor of Business Economics and Strategy, Stern School of Business, New York University "Reading Boudewijn de Bruin's book should be rewarding both for game theorists interested in the conceptual foundations of their discipline and for philosophers who want to learn more about formal analysis of strategic interaction. It provides an in-depth logical study of the currently dominant epistemic approaches to non-cooperative games, with an eye both to the attractions and to the serious challenges facing the Epistemic Programme". Wlodek Rabinowicz, Professor of Practical Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Lund University . (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Del Mar offered two main criticisms of Marmor’s account of social conventions. The first took issue with Marmor’s claim that the constitutive rules of games and kindred social practices determine in an objective way their central aims and values; the second charged Marmor with scanting the historical context in which conventions do their important normative work in shaping the goals of games. I argue that Del Mar’s criticism of Marmor’s account of (...) the normative centrality and force of constitutive rules in games and the like fails, but that his criticism faulting Marmor for giving short shrift to the normative work conventions do in these social practices is on the mark. So while I reject Del Mar’s claim that a closer look at the social and historical contexts in which the conventions of games and the like carry out their normative tasks undermines Marmor’s account of constitutive rules, I think his argument that conventions play a far more important, even if supplementary, role in shaping our understanding of and participation in these social practices than Marmor allows is persuasive. (shrink)

Game logics describe general games through powers of players for forcing outcomes. In particular, they encode an algebra of sequential game operations such as choice, dual and composition. Logic games are special games for specific purposes such as proof or semantical evaluation for first-order or modal languages. We show that the general algebra of game operations coincides with that over just logical evaluation games, whence the latter are quite general after all. The main tool in proving (...) this is a representation of arbitrary games as modal or first-order evaluation games. We probe how far our analysis extends to product operations on games. We also discuss some more general consequences of this new perspective for standard logic. (shrink)

A comprehensive examination of the interfaces of logic, computer science, and game theory, drawing on twenty years of research on logic and games.

Martial-arts practice is not quite anything else: it is like sport, but is not sport; it constantly refers to and as it were cohabits with violence, but is not violent; it is dance-like but not dance. It shares a common athleticism with sports and dance, yet stands apart from both, especially through its paradoxical commitment to the external value of being an instrument of violence. My discussion seeks to illuminate martial arts practice by systematic contrast to games of sport (...) and works of performance art, especially dance. (shrink)

Godfrey-Smith advocates for linking deception in sender-receiver games to the existence of undermining signals. I present games in which deceptive signals can be arbitrarily frequent, without this undermining information transfer between sender and receiver.

One way for an experience to provide an effective scaffold for learning is when the concepts and theories it is intended to help students grasp and understand can be used to productively analyze, make sense of, and discuss the experience itself. In this essay I propose that games and game mechanics can be used to create learning experiences amenable to this kind of scaffold.

We present and defend a view labeled “practiceism” which provides a solution to the incompatibility problems. The classic incompatibility problem is inconsistency of:1. Someone who intentionally violates the rules of a game is not playing the game.2. In many cases, players intentionally violate the rules as part of playing the game.The problem has a normative counterpart:1’. In normal cases, it is wrong for a player to intentionally violate the rules of the game.2’. In many normal cases, it is not wrong (...) for a player to intentionally violate the rules of the game.According to both formalism and informalism, the rules of the game include the formal rules of the game. Both traditional positions avoid the incompatibility problems by rejecting 1 and 1'. Practiceism rejects 2 and 2’: it maintains that the rules are the rules manifested in playing the game, not the formal rules.Practiceism presents two theses: (... (shrink)

In this paper we seek to account for scalar implicatures and Horn's division of pragmatic labor in game?theoretical terms by making use mainly of refinements of the standard solution concept of signaling games. Scalar implicatures are accounted for in terms of Farrell's (1993) notion of a ?neologism?proof? equilibrium together with Grice's maxim of Quality. Horn's division of pragmatic labor is accounted for in terms of Cho and Kreps? (1987) notion of ?equilibrium domination? and their ?Intuitive Criterion?

Natural dialogue does not proceed haphazardly; it has an easily recognized “episodic” structure and coherence which conform to a well developed set of conventions. This paper represents these conventions formally in terms related to speech act theory and to a theory of action.The major formal unit, the dialogue game, specifies aspects of the communication of both participants in a dialogue. We define the formal notion of dialogue games, and describe some of the important games of English. Dialogue (...) class='Hi'>games are conventions of interactive goal pursuit. Using them, each participant pursues his own goals in a way which sometimes serves the goals of the other. The idea of dialogue games can thus be seen as a part of a broader theoretical perspective which characterizes virtually all communication as goal pursuit activity.We also define and exemplify the property of Motivational Coherence of dialogues. Motivational Coherence can be used as an interpretive principle in explaining language comprehension.Actual dialogue games have a kind of causal connectedness which is not a consequence of their formal properties. This is explained in terms of a theory of action, which is also seen to explain a similar attribute of speech acts. (shrink)

We investigate a simple game paradigm for intuitionistic logic, inspired by Wajsberg’s implicit inhabitation algorithm and Beth tableaux. The principal idea is that one player, ∃ros, is trying to construct a proof in normal form while his opponent, ∀phrodite, attempts to build a counter-model. The determinacy of the game implies therefore both completeness and semantic cut-elimination.

This paper addresses the theoretical notion of a game as it arisesacross scientific inquiries, exploring its uses as a technical andformal asset in logic and science versus an explanatory mechanism. Whilegames comprise a widely used method in a broad intellectual realm(including, but not limited to, philosophy, logic, mathematics,cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computation, linguistics,physics, economics), each discipline advocates its own methodology and aunified understanding is lacking. In the first part of this paper, anumber of game theories in formal studies are critically (...) surveyed. Inthe second part, the doctrine of games as explanations for logic isassessed, and the relevance of a conceptual analysis of games tocognition discussed. It is suggested that the notion of evolution playsa part in the game-theoretic concept of meaning. (shrink)

I argue that by any major definition of art many modern video games should be considered art. Rather than defining art and defending video games based on a single contentious definition, I offer reasons for thinking that video games can be art according to historical, aesthetic, institutional, representational and expressive theories of art. Overall, I argue that while many video games probably should not be considered art, there are good reasons to think that some video (...) class='Hi'>games should be classified as art. I also show that the debates over the artistic status of chess and sports offer some insights into the status of video games. (shrink)

I, player : the puzzle of personal identity (MMORPGS and Virtual Communities) -- The game inside the mind, the mind inside the game (The Nintendo Wii Gaming Console) -- Realistic blood and gore : do violent games make violent gamers? (First-person Shooters) -- Games and God's goodness (World-builder and Tycoon Games) -- The metaphysics of interactive art (Puzzle and Adventure Games) -- Artificial and human intelligence (Single-player RPGS) -- Epilogue: Video games and the meaning of (...) life. (shrink)

Various potential strategic interactions between a “strong” Artificial intelligence and humans are analyzed using simple 2 × 2 order games, drawing on the New Periodic Table of those games developed by Robinson and Goforth. Strong risk aversion on the part of the human player leads to shutting down the AI research program, but alternative preference orderings by the human and the AI result in Nash equilibria with interesting properties. Some of the AI-Human games have multiple equilibria, and (...) in other cases Pareto-improvement over the Nash equilibrium could be attained if the AI’s behavior towards humans could be guaranteed to be benign. The preferences of a superintelligent AI cannot be known in advance, but speculation is possible as to its ranking of alternative states of the world, and how it might assimilate the accumulated wisdom of humanity. (shrink)