Related papers: Rational Groupthink
An analyst observes an agent take a sequence of actions. The analyst does not have access to the agent's information and ponders whether the observed actions could be justified through a rational Bayesian model with a known utility…
We consider an infinite collection of agents who make decisions, sequentially, about an unknown underlying binary state of the world. Each agent, prior to making a decision, receives an independent private signal whose distribution depends…
We revisit DeGroot learning to examine the robustness of social learning in dynamic networks -- networks that evolve randomly over time. Dynamics have double-edged effects depending on social structure: while they can foster consensus and…
Peer learning is a novel high-level reinforcement learning framework for agents learning in groups. While standard reinforcement learning trains an individual agent in trial-and-error fashion, all on its own, peer learning addresses a…
Learning collaborative behaviors is essential for multi-agent systems. Traditionally, multi-agent reinforcement learning solves this implicitly through a joint reward and centralized observations, assuming collaborative behavior will…
Group-agent reinforcement learning (GARL) is a newly arising learning scenario, where multiple reinforcement learning agents study together in a group, sharing knowledge in an asynchronous fashion. The goal is to improve the learning…
We develop a novel framework of bounded rationality under cognitive frictions that studies learning over optimal behavior through both deliberative reasoning and accumulated experiences. Using both types of information, agents engage in…
Groupthink occurs when everyone in a group starts thinking alike, as when people put unlimited faith in a leader. Avoiding this phenomenon is a ubiquitous challenge to problem-solving enterprises and typical countermeasures involve the…
We propose a model of inference and heuristic decision-making in groups that is rooted in the Bayes rule but avoids the complexities of rational inference in partially observed environments with incomplete information, which are…
Effective group decision-making is critical in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Yet, how different mechanisms for reaching consensus impact collaboration quality and efficiency remains understudied. We conduct a systematic study on group…
We study sequential social learning with endogenous information acquisition when agents have a taste for nonconformity. Each agent observes predecessors' actions, chooses whether to acquire a private signal (and its precision), and then…
We study a model of consensus decision making, in which a finite group of Bayesian agents has to choose between one of two courses of action. Each member of the group has a private and independent signal at his or her disposal, giving some…
We offer a very simple model of how collective memory may form. Agents keep signalling within neighbourhoods, and depending on how many support each signal, some signals "win" in that neighbourhood. By agents interacting between different…
We study the utility of social learning in a distributed detection model with agents sharing the same goal: a collective decision that optimizes an agreed upon criterion. We show that social learning is helpful in some cases but is provably…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents often exhibit learning behaviors that are not intuitively interpretable by human observers, which can result in suboptimal feedback in collaborative teaching settings. Yet, how humans perceive and…
Humans are able to communicate in sophisticated ways with only sparse signals, especially when cooperating. Two parallel theoretical perspectives on cooperative communication emphasize pragmatic reasoning and joint utility mechanisms to…
This work investigates the case of a network of agents that attempt to learn some unknown state of the world amongst the finitely many possibilities. At each time step, agents all receive random, independently distributed private signals…
Many real-world networks are known to exhibit facts that counter our knowledge prescribed by the theories on network creation and communication patterns. A common prerequisite in network analysis is that information on nodes and links will…
We propose a simple model to explore an educational phenomenon where the correct answer emerges from group discussion. We construct our model based on several plausible assumptions: (i) We tend to follow peers' opinions. However, if a…
Methods for learning optimal policies in autonomous agents often assume that the way the domain is conceptualised---its possible states and actions and their causal structure---is known in advance and does not change during learning. This…