Reciprocal Reward Influence Encourages Cooperation From Self-Interested Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhou, John L., Hong, Weizhe, Kao, Jonathan C.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Zhou, John L.
Hong, Weizhe
Kao, Jonathan C.
author_facet Zhou, John L.
Hong, Weizhe
Kao, Jonathan C.
contents Cooperation between self-interested individuals is a widespread phenomenon in the natural world, but remains elusive in interactions between artificially intelligent agents. Instead, naive reinforcement learning algorithms typically converge to Pareto-dominated outcomes in even the simplest of social dilemmas. An emerging literature on opponent shaping has demonstrated the ability to reach prosocial outcomes by influencing the learning of other agents. However, such methods differentiate through the learning step of other agents or optimize for meta-game dynamics, which rely on privileged access to opponents' learning algorithms or exponential sample complexity, respectively. To provide a learning rule-agnostic and sample-efficient alternative, we introduce Reciprocators, reinforcement learning agents which are intrinsically motivated to reciprocate the influence of opponents' actions on their returns. This approach seeks to modify other agents' $Q$-values by increasing their return following beneficial actions (with respect to the Reciprocator) and decreasing it after detrimental actions, guiding them towards mutually beneficial actions without directly differentiating through a model of their policy. We show that Reciprocators can be used to promote cooperation in temporally extended social dilemmas during simultaneous learning. Our code is available at https://github.com/johnlyzhou/reciprocator/.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_01641
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reciprocal Reward Influence Encourages Cooperation From Self-Interested Agents
Zhou, John L.
Hong, Weizhe
Kao, Jonathan C.
Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
Cooperation between self-interested individuals is a widespread phenomenon in the natural world, but remains elusive in interactions between artificially intelligent agents. Instead, naive reinforcement learning algorithms typically converge to Pareto-dominated outcomes in even the simplest of social dilemmas. An emerging literature on opponent shaping has demonstrated the ability to reach prosocial outcomes by influencing the learning of other agents. However, such methods differentiate through the learning step of other agents or optimize for meta-game dynamics, which rely on privileged access to opponents' learning algorithms or exponential sample complexity, respectively. To provide a learning rule-agnostic and sample-efficient alternative, we introduce Reciprocators, reinforcement learning agents which are intrinsically motivated to reciprocate the influence of opponents' actions on their returns. This approach seeks to modify other agents' $Q$-values by increasing their return following beneficial actions (with respect to the Reciprocator) and decreasing it after detrimental actions, guiding them towards mutually beneficial actions without directly differentiating through a model of their policy. We show that Reciprocators can be used to promote cooperation in temporally extended social dilemmas during simultaneous learning. Our code is available at https://github.com/johnlyzhou/reciprocator/.
title Reciprocal Reward Influence Encourages Cooperation From Self-Interested Agents
topic Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01641