Thinking and Chatting Deontically - Novel Support of Communication for Learning and Training with Time Travel Prevention Games

The authors’ key area of application is training for the prevention of accidents in the process technology industries. They run a professional training center with own 3D virtual environments. At TLIC 2021, four of the present authors delivered a contribution advocating planning of human training experiences as dynamically as managing some severely disturbed technical system back into a normal operation - such as an out of control chemical reactor - and enabling human trainees who failed to complete a risky task - thereby possibly ruining a (fortunately only virtual) technical installation - to virtually travel back in time to make good the damage. At TLIC 2022, they introduced cascades of gradually more intricate categories of time travel games. With every step from one category to the next, the deployed AI gets more powerful and effective in providing adaptive guidance of human trainees. The most advanced time travel games are those that allow for the dynamic modification of events experienced in the virtual past. In this way, the game system evolves over time and adapts to the needs of human trainees with emphasis on guidance for trainees who fail repeatedly. The extended team of authors presents a novel perspective at time travel prevention games that leads to a more human-centered adaptive guidance. Training is seen through the lens of deontic modal logic. The focus is on undesired events such as explosions, fire, health hazards due to toxic vapors, and the like. The game system’s AI is reasoning about necessity and possibility of such events. It offers to human trainees/players helpful chats about modalities of decisive events of training.