Facilitating Cooperation in Human-Agent Hybrid Populations through Autonomous Agents

TL;DR

This paper explores how autonomous agents influence human cooperation in social dilemma games, revealing that their design can significantly promote or hinder cooperative behavior depending on the game type and population structure.

Contribution

It provides a novel analysis of the effects of cooperative and defective autonomous agents on human cooperation across different game scenarios using evolutionary game theory.

Findings

Cooperative AAs have limited impact on prisoner's dilemma.

Defective AAs promote cooperation in snowdrift games.

Weak imitation strength enhances the cooperative influence of AAs.

Abstract

Cooperation is a vital social behavior that plays a crucial role in human prosperity, enabling conflict resolution and averting disastrous outcomes. With the increasing presence of autonomous agents (AAs), human-agent interaction becomes more frequent in modern society. We investigate the impact of cooperative and defective AAs on human cooperation within the framework of evolutionary game theory, particularly in one-shot social dilemma games. Our findings reveal that cooperative AAs have a limited impact on prisoner's dilemma, but facilitate cooperation in stag hunt games. Surprisingly, defective AAs, rather than cooperative AAs, promote complete dominance of cooperation in snowdrift games. Meanwhile, in scenarios with weak imitation strength, cooperative AAs are able to maintain or even promote cooperation in all these games. Additionally, the results obtained from structured populations also imply that the effectiveness of AAs in promoting cooperation can be maximized by carefully considering their design and application in a given context.