Facilitating Cooperation in Human-Agent Hybrid Populations through Autonomous Agents

Abstract

Cooperation is a vital social behavior that plays a crucial role in human prosperity, enabling conflict resolution and averting disastrous outcomes. With the increasing presence of autonomous agents (AAs), human-agent interaction becomes more frequent in modern society. We investigate the impact of cooperative and defective AAs on human cooperation within the framework of evolutionary game theory, particularly in one-shot social dilemma games. Our findings reveal that cooperative AAs have a limited impact on prisoner's dilemma, but facilitate cooperation in stag hunt games. Surprisingly, defective AAs, rather than cooperative AAs, promote complete dominance of cooperation in snowdrift games. Meanwhile, in scenarios with weak imitation strength, cooperative AAs are able to maintain or even promote cooperation in all these games. Additionally, the results obtained from structured populations also imply that the effectiveness of AAs in promoting cooperation can be maximized by carefully considering their design and application in a given context.