Universality in Multi-Agent Systems

Much research in multi-agent systems reflects the field’s origins in classical artificial intelligence, showing how various refinements to the internal reasoning of individual agents improve overall system performance. Sometimes, aspects of a system’s behavior are independent of the algorithms used by individual agents. Drawing from an analogy in statistical physics, we term this phenomenon “universality.” The underlying concept is that systems whose elements differ widely may nevertheless have common emergent features. We develop a notion of universality in MAS based on the concept’s use in its original (physics) setting. We illustrate the concept in several examples, and discuss the implications of MAS universality for the theory and practice of MAS. We speculate that there exists a hierarchy of types of universality. The usual use of the term in statistical mechanics refers to the most refined, simplest, and quantitative, while commonalities among systems that are of inte...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: H. Van Dyke Parunak, Sven Brueckner, Robert Savit
• Keywords: ATAL 2004, Individual Agents, MAS Universality, Multi-agent Systems