ARTFEED — Contemporary Art Intelligence

LLMs Play Mini-Mafia: A Game-Theoretic Benchmark for Social Intelligence

ai-technology · 2026-05-16

A new analytical framework, Mini-Mafia, simplifies the social deduction game Mafia to four players—mafioso, detective, villager, and a fixed night phase—to model large language model interactions. The mafia win-rate follows logit(p) = v × (m − d), where m, d, v measure deception, disclosure, and detection. This yields the Mini-Mafia Benchmark, using Bayesian inference on gameplay data to evaluate LLM social intelligence theoretically rather than empirically.

Key facts

  • Mini-Mafia is a four-player simplification of the social deduction game Mafia.
  • The game includes a mafioso, a detective, and a villager with a fixed night phase.
  • Mafia win-rate formula: logit(p) = v × (m − d).
  • m represents the mafioso's deception capability.
  • d represents the detective's disclosure capability.
  • v represents the villager's detection capability.
  • The framework is turned into the Mini-Mafia Benchmark.
  • The benchmark uses Bayesian inference over gameplay data.

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