English

Robust Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma: Program Equilibrium via Provability Logic

Computer Science and Game Theory 2021-04-06 v2 Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

We consider the one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma between algorithms with read-access to one anothers' source codes, and we use the modal logic of provability to build agents that can achieve mutual cooperation in a manner that is robust, in that cooperation does not require exact equality of the agents' source code, and unexploitable, meaning that such an agent never cooperates when its opponent defects. We construct a general framework for such "modal agents", and study their properties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.5577,
  title  = {Robust Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma: Program Equilibrium via Provability Logic},
  author = {Mihaly Barasz and Paul Christiano and Benja Fallenstein and Marcello Herreshoff and Patrick LaVictoire and Eliezer Yudkowsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.5577},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

18 pages. Updated 2021 to indicate that bounded analogues of these results have yet to be proved

R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:51:59.401Z