Multi-Agent Empowerment and Emergence of Complex Behavior in Groups

2026-04-22

AI Summary

This study investigates how intrinsically motivated agents can spontaneously generate complex collective behaviors in multi-agent systems. Addressing the lack of a rigorous formalization of empowerment in existing approaches, this work introduces the first multi-agent extension of empowerment, integrating information-theoretic optimization with computationally efficient methods. The proposed framework is validated in two distinct settings: a coupled tendon-driven bipedal agent and a controllable Vicsek flocking model. Experimental results demonstrate that the mechanism autonomously induces higher-order collective organization in heterogeneous environments, revealing the pivotal role of intrinsic motivation in guiding large-scale, complex cooperative behaviors.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Agent-Based Simulation and Emergent Behavior
• Intelligent Robots: Multi-Robot Systems
• Humans and AI: Human-Aware Planning and Behavior Prediction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Agentic search

Abstract

Intrinsic motivations are receiving increasing attention, i.e. behavioral incentives that are not engineered, but emerge from the interaction of an agent with its surroundings. In this work we study the emergence of behaviors driven by one such incentive, empowerment, specifically in the context of more than one agent. We formulate a principled extension of empowerment to the multi-agent setting, and demonstrate its efficient calculation. We observe that this intrinsic motivation gives rise to characteristic modes of group-organization in two qualitatively distinct environments: a pair of agents coupled by a tendon, and a controllable Vicsek flock. This demonstrates the potential of intrinsic motivations such as empowerment to not just drive behavior for only individual agents but also higher levels of behavioral organization at scale.

Problem

• multi-agent
• empowerment
• intrinsic motivation
• emergent behavior
• collective organization

Innovation

• multi-agent empowerment
• intrinsic motivation
• emergent behavior
• group organization
• efficient computation