Scientists Used AI to Stop Human Greed in a Shared Economy Experiment
Authors:
- Raphael Koster
- Miruna Pîslar
- Andrea Tacchetti
- Jan Balaguer
- Leqi Liu
- Romuald Elie
- Oliver P. Hauser
- Karl Tuyls
- Matt Botvinick
- Christopher Summerfield
Abstract
A canonical social dilemma arises when resources are allocated to people, who can either reciprocate with interest or keep the proceeds. The right resource allocation mechanisms can encourage levels of reciprocation that sustain the commons. Here, in an iterated multiplayer trust game, we use deep reinforcement learning (RL) to design a social planner that promotes sustainable contributions from human participants. We first trained neural networks to behave like human players, creating a stimulated economy that allows us to study the dynamics of receipt and reciprocation. We use RL to train a mechanism to maximise aggregate return to players. The RL mechanism discovers a redistributive policy that leads to a large but also more equal surplus. The mechanism outperforms baseline mechanisms by conditioning its generosity on available resources...
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