Signal Use and Emergent Cooperation

TL;DR

This paper explores how autonomous agents develop shared communication signals and culture through learning, which enhances cooperation and collective efficiency within tribes, influenced by social structures and signal transmission.

Contribution

It introduces the NEC-DAC system where neural networks enable agents to develop and transmit culture and signals, advancing understanding of emergent cooperation in autonomous systems.

Findings

Signals facilitate culture emergence and transmission.

Communication strategies impact tribe performance.

Hierarchies influence cooperation and culture development.

Abstract

In this work, we investigate how autonomous agents, organized into tribes, learn to use communication signals to coordinate their activities and enhance their collective efficiency. Using the NEC-DAC (Neurally Encoded Culture - Distributed Autonomous Communicators) system, where each agent is equipped with its own neural network for decision-making, we demonstrate how these agents develop a shared behavioral system -- akin to a culture -- through learning and signalling. Our research focuses on the self-organization of culture within these tribes of agents and how varying communication strategies impact their fitness and cooperation. By analyzing different social structures, such as authority hierarchies, we show that the culture of cooperation significantly influences the tribe's performance. Furthermore, we explore how signals not only facilitate the emergence of culture but also enable its transmission across generations of agents. Additionally, we examine the benefits of coordinating behavior and signaling within individual agents' neural networks.