Franks, Henry P. W., Griffiths, Nathan and Jhumka, Arshad (2012) Manipulating convention emergence using influencer agents. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Volume 26 (Number 3). pp. 315-353. doi:10.1007/s10458-012-9193-x

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Abstract

Coordination in open multi-agent systems (MAS) can reduce costs to agents associated with conflicting goals and actions, allowing artificial societies to attain higher levels of aggregate utility. Techniques for increasing coordination typically involve incorporating notions of conventions, namely socially adopted standards of behaviour, at either an agent or system level. As system designers cannot necessarily create high quality conventions a priori, we require an understanding of how agents can dynamically generate, adopt and adapt conventions during their normal interaction processes. Many open MAS domains, such as peer-to-peer and mobile ad-hoc networks, exhibit properties that restrict the application of the mechanisms that are often used, especially those requiring the incorporation of additional components at an agent or society level. In this paper, we use Influencer Agents (IAs) to manipulate convention emergence, which we define as agents with strategies and goals chosen to aid the emergence of high quality conventions in domains characterised by heterogeneous ownership and uniform levels of agent authority. Using the language coordination problem (Steels in Artif Life 2(3):319–392, 1995), we evaluate the effect of IAs on convention emergence in a population. We show that relatively low proportions of IAs can (i) effectively manipulate the emergence of high-quality conventions, and (ii) increase convention adoption and quality. We make no assumptions involving agent mechanism design or internal architecture beyond the usual assumption of rationality. Our results demonstrate the fragility of convention emergence in the presence of malicious or faulty agents that attempt to propagate low quality conventions, and confirm the importance of social network structure in convention adoption.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Electronic computers. Computer science. Computer software
Divisions:	Faculty of Science > Computer Science
Journal or Publication Title:	Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
Publisher:	Springer New York LLC
ISSN:	1387-2532
Official Date:	15 February 2012
Dates:	Date Event 15 February 2012 Published
Volume:	Volume 26
Number:	Number 3
Page Range:	pp. 315-353
DOI:	10.1007/s10458-012-9193-x
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access

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