Blog: Research Paves the Way for Unselfish Computerized Agents

Research Paves the Way for Unselfish Computerized Agents
University of Southampton (ECS) (08/19/10) Lewis, Joyce

Adam Davies, a Ph.D. student at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science, has developed a computer simulation that could describe how selfish agents learn to cooperate in nature. Davies' adaptive system encourages agents to stop behaving selfishly and to choose actions that favor the common good instead. The approach is based on Hebbian learning, a learning process that occurs in the brain, to develop agents that behave as creatures of habit and can learn to make decisions that maximize global utility. "Our research looks at the effect of a strategy for increasing total utility in systems of selfish agents," Davies says. "With this strategy in place, selfish agents make decisions based on their learnt preferences rather than their true utility."

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