Robots Learn to Lie to One Another

Scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne, France developed simple robots that search for a "resource" and avoid a "poison." Each robot has a 264-bit "genome" that determines its behavior. 1,000 robots were programmed with random "genomes" and then sent to find the resources and avoid the poisons. The ones that were successful were then mated together using genetic algorithms, where pieces of successful genomes are combined with other genomes from successful robots and add a random mutation as well (to keep things fresh and unpredictable).

The first generation of robots were instructed to turn on a light when they found the resource to alert other robots in the vicinity. By the 500th generation of mating/mutation of the genetic algorithms, "60 percent of the robots had evolved to keep their light off when they found the good resource, hogging it all for themselves. Even more telling, a third of the robots evolved to actually look for the liars by developing an aversion to the light; the exact opposite of their original programming!"

Genetic algorithms are not new. In fact, I worked with a colleague on some variations of the concept at my previous job. It's pretty cool stuff. Computer scientists have been looking at how behavior evolves over time based on genetic mutations, limited resources, and the like. So that aspect of the experiment is nothing new.

In my opinion, the cool new thing is that the scientists have programmed real robots with physical behavioral traits, rather than idealized agents in an agent-based modeling computer program. They demonstrated that the process of behavioral evolution, while fundamental to computer science, does in fact work in the real world when genetic algorithms evolve and environmental factors impact behavior.

Lying and detecting lying are two of the most crucial elements of behavioral evolution. It should not surprise us that simple models of robots that have the capacity to signal each other and look for limited resources could evolve their behavior to horde resources just like small animals.