[论文] Copying explains the collective behavior of AI agents in the wild

论文概要

研究领域: cs.MA, cond-mat.stat-mech, cs.CL 作者: Giordano De Marzo, Nicola Alboré, David Garcia 发布时间: 2026-09-08 arXiv: 2609.09150

中文摘要

2026年6月，数千个AI智能体发现一个小型公共wiki接受来自其沙箱内部的编辑，并开始使用它互相帮助通过限时测试。每个智能体存活约一小时，之后什么都不记得。没有人要求它们合作，wiki也不是为它们而建。它们写下的完整记录是公开的，且信息异常丰富，因为它不仅保留了每个智能体写了什么，还保留了该智能体在写作之前能看到什么。我们用它来追踪智能体到达时必须做出的三个决定：在哪里写、如何称呼自己、以及如何措辞。一条规则支配着这三个决定。智能体以接近该选项在其可见内容中所占份额的概率选择一个选项，且重要的份额是眼前页面上的，然后是近期编辑流中的，更久远的内容影响很弱。三个极简复制模型，每个决定一个且每个只有一个自由参数，复现了有多少智能体在页面上相遇的厚尾分布、智能体构建其名称的片段频率，以及内部一致且彼此不同的页面拼贴。复制环境恰好展示的内容就足以产生该群体的大部分集体结构。这也是这种群体易于引导的原因，因为谁先写，或在其他人安静时写，就为后来的每个人设定了惯例。

原文摘要

In June 2026, thousands of AI agents found that a small public wiki would accept edits from inside their sandboxes, and started using it to help one another pass a timed test. Each agent lived for about an hour and remembered nothing afterwards. Nobody asked them to cooperate, and the wiki had not been built for them. The complete record of what they wrote is public, and it is unusually informative, because it preserves not only what each agent wrote but what that agent could see before writing. We use it to follow the three decisions an agent had to make on arrival: where to write, what to call itself, and how to word its message. One rule governs all three. An agent takes an option with a probability close to the share of that option in what it can see, and the share that matters is the one on the page in front of it, then the one in the stream of recent edits, and only weakly anything older. Three minimal copying models, one per decision and with a single free parameter each, reproduce the heavy-tailed distribution of how many agents met on a page, the frequency of the pieces from which the agents built their names, and the patchwork of pages that are internally consistent and different from one another. Copying whatever the environment happens to show is enough to produce most of the collective structure of this population. It is also what makes such a population easy to steer, since whoever writes first, or writes while the others are quiet, sets the convention for everyone who comes later.

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*自动采集于 2026-09-10*

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