Social Pathologies of Adaptive Agents

D. Jensen and V. Lesser (2002). "Social pathologies of adaptive agents." In Safe Learning Agents: Papers from the 2002 AAAI Spring Symposium. M. Barley and H. Guesgen (Editors). Technical report SS-02-07. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press. pp. 13-19.

Abstract

Multiagent systems do not always behave as their designers intend. In some cases, a simple flaw in design or implementation causes sub-optimal behavior, and such flaws are often easy to remedy. In other cases, sub-optimal behavior is caused by fundamental characteristics of system structure or problem representation, and these flaws can be difficult to understand and avoid. Such cases are often called pathologies. Our research focuses on a particular class of pathologies of multiagent systems — social pathologies of adaptive agents. Such pathologies are adaptations of individual agents that are locally beneficial but that degrade the performance of the overall system. Social pathologies are particularly troublesome because they contradict a central assumption of multiagent systems — that local performance improvements by one or more agents will lead to system-wide performance improvements.

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