Abstract
SummaryCooperation in human groups is challenging, and various mechanisms are required to sustain it, although it nevertheless usually decays over time. Here, we perform theoretically informed experiments involving networks of humans (1,024 subjects in 64 networks) playing a public-goods game to which we sometimes added autonomous agents (bots) programmed to use only local knowledge. We show that cooperation can not only be stabilized, but even promoted, when the bots intervene in the partner selections made by the humans, re-shaping social connections locally within a larger group. Cooperation rates increased from 60.4% at baseline to 79.4% at the end. This network-intervention strategy outperformed other strategies, such as adding bots playing tit-for-tat. We also confirm that even a single bot can foster cooperation in human groups by using a mixed strategy designed to support the development of cooperative clusters. Simple artificial intelligence can increase the cooperation of groups.
Highlights
Human societies function best when people produce public goods that offer collective benefits that they could not otherwise obtain individually (Olson, 1965)
SUMMARY Cooperation in human groups is challenging, and various mechanisms are required to sustain it, it usually decays over time
We show that cooperation can be stabilized, but even promoted, when the bots intervene in the partner selections made by the humans, reshaping social connections locally within a larger group
Summary
Human societies function best when people produce public goods that offer collective benefits that they could not otherwise obtain individually (Olson, 1965). A large body of work has explored broader, institutional approaches to overcoming cooperation dilemmas, such as reputation (Cuesta et al, 2015; Nowak and Sigmund, 2005), punishment (Fehr and Gachter, 2002; Fowler, 2005), rewards (Rand et al, 2009), population structure (Allen et al, 2017; Ohtsuki et al, 2006), tie rewiring (Rand et al, 2011), or the establishment of a central authority (Ostrom, 1990) It is still unclear how a small fraction of individuals might guide a group of others toward the creation of public goods without a super-ordinate institutional change. Approaches that increase levels of cooperation in groups (from their baseline) are scant
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