Mimicry and the Emergence of Cooperative Communication

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Cope, Dylan, McBurney, Peter
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Cope, Dylan
McBurney, Peter
author_facet Cope, Dylan
McBurney, Peter
contents In many situations, communication between agents is a critical component of cooperative multi-agent systems, however, it can be difficult to learn or evolve. In this paper, we investigate a simple way in which the emergence of communication may be facilitated. Namely, we explore the effects of when agents can mimic preexisting, externally generated useful signals. The key idea here is that these signals incentivise listeners to develop positive responses, that can then also be invoked by speakers mimicking those signals. This investigation starts with formalising this problem, and demonstrating that this form of mimicry changes optimisation dynamics and may provide the opportunity to escape non-communicative local optima. We then explore the problem empirically with a simulation in which spatially situated agents must communicate to collect resources. Our results show that both evolutionary optimisation and reinforcement learning may benefit from this intervention.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_16622
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mimicry and the Emergence of Cooperative Communication
Cope, Dylan
McBurney, Peter
Multiagent Systems
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
In many situations, communication between agents is a critical component of cooperative multi-agent systems, however, it can be difficult to learn or evolve. In this paper, we investigate a simple way in which the emergence of communication may be facilitated. Namely, we explore the effects of when agents can mimic preexisting, externally generated useful signals. The key idea here is that these signals incentivise listeners to develop positive responses, that can then also be invoked by speakers mimicking those signals. This investigation starts with formalising this problem, and demonstrating that this form of mimicry changes optimisation dynamics and may provide the opportunity to escape non-communicative local optima. We then explore the problem empirically with a simulation in which spatially situated agents must communicate to collect resources. Our results show that both evolutionary optimisation and reinforcement learning may benefit from this intervention.
title Mimicry and the Emergence of Cooperative Communication
topic Multiagent Systems
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.16622