Tad Hogg
Dynamics of Computation Group
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto, CA 94304
hogg@parc.xerox.com
@INPROCEEDINGS {,
AUTHOR = "Tad Hogg",
TITLE = "Social Dilemmas in Computational Ecosystems",
BOOKTITLE = Proc. of the 14th Intl. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI95),
PAGES = "711-716",
PUBLISHER = "Morgan Kaufmann",
ADDRESS = "San Mateo, CA",
YEAR = "1995"}
Computational ecosystems are large distributed systems in which
autonomous agents make choices asynchronously based on locally available
information which can be uncertain and delayed. They share these
characteristics with biological ecosystems, human societies and market
economies. We show that, even when designed with a single overall goal
in mind as in the case of distributed problem solving, computational
ecosystems can face well-known social dilemmas of sustaining cooperative
behavior among selfish agents. Specifically, public-goods problems,
where a common good is available to all regardless of individual
contribution, can arise due to information limitations as well as the
commonly recognized incentive conflicts. Some techniques for mitigating
the impact of these problems are also presented.
postcript (212K, available on-line only within Xerox)