A Reputation System for Large Language Model-based Multi-agent Systems to Avoid the Tragedy of the Commons

The tragedy of the commons, where individual self-interest leads to collectively disastrous outcomes, is a pervasive challenge in human society. Recent studies have demonstrated that similar phenomena can arise in generative multi-agent systems (MASs). To address this challenge, this paper explores the use of reputation systems as a remedy. We propose RepuNet, a dynamic, dual-level reputation framework that models both agent-level reputation dynamics and system-level network evolution. Specifically, driven by direct interactions and indirect gossip, agents form reputations for both themselves and their peers, and decide whether to connect or disconnect other agents for future interactions. Through two distinct scenarios, we show that RepuNet effectively mitigates the 'tragedy of the commons', promoting and sustaining cooperation in generative MASs. Moreover, we find that reputation systems can give rise to rich emergent behaviors in generative MASs, such as the formation of cooperative clusters, the social isolation of exploitative agents, and the preference for sharing positive gossip rather than negative ones.

Emergence of Social Norms in Large Language Model-based Agent Societies

The emergence of social norms has attracted much interest in a wide array of disciplines, ranging from social science and cognitive science to artificial intelligence. In this paper, we propose the first generative agent architecture that empowers the emergence of social norms within a population of large language model-based agents. Our architecture, named CRSEC, consists of four modules: Creation & Representation, Spreading, Evaluation, and Compliance. Our architecture addresses several important aspects of the emergent processes all in one: (i) where social norms come from, (ii) how they are formally represented, (iii) how they spread through agents' communications and observations, (iv) how they are examined with a sanity check and synthesized in the long term, and (v) how they are incorporated into agents' planning and actions. Our experiments deployed in the Smallville sandbox game environment demonstrate the capability of our architecture to establish social norms and reduce social conflicts within large language model-based multi-agent systems. The positive outcomes of our human evaluation, conducted with 30 evaluators, further affirm the effectiveness of our approach.