Story Arena: A Multi-Agent Environment for Envisioning the Future of Software Engineering

2025-11-07

AI Summary

Conventional technology foresight methods lack mechanisms for multi-perspective negotiation and co-creative narrative generation. Method: We propose a stance-driven multi-agent collaboration framework wherein heterogeneous AI agents—each grounded in distinct value stances—engage in autonomous, deliberative dialogue to negotiate collective visions of human-AI coevolution and collaboratively author design fiction. This approach integrates stance modeling, negotiation-based discourse, and cooperative story generation—marking the first application of multi-agent systems to technologically grounded future narrative construction. Contribution/Results: Empirical evaluation yielded the short design fiction “Code of Trust,” demonstrating the framework’s efficacy in facilitating critical imagination and consensus formation around complex socio-technical challenges—including trust engineering, content ownership, and augmentation-aware collaboration. The work establishes a novel paradigm for participatory, AI-augmented technology foresight.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Agreement, Argumentation & Negotiation
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI

Abstract

What better way to understand the impact of AI on software engineering than to ask AI itself? We constructed Story Arena, a multi-agent"writer's room"in which multiple AI agents, independently imbued with a position statement on the future of software engineering, converse with each other to develop a shared vision. They then use this shared vision to collaboratively construct a design fiction that depicts this vision in narrative form. We present"The Code of Trust,"a short fiction that investigates themes of human comprehension, trust, content ownership, augmentation vs. replacement, and uncertain futures in human-AI co-creation.

Problem

• Envisioning AI's impact on software engineering future
• Developing shared vision through multi-agent AI discussions
• Creating narrative fiction to explore human-AI collaboration themes

Innovation

• Multi-agent environment simulates software engineering future
• AI agents develop shared vision through conversational interaction
• Collaborative design fiction transforms vision into narrative form