The scientific community discourages authors of research papers from citing papers that did not influence them. Such "rhetorical" citations are assumed to degrade the literature and incentives for good work. While a world where authors cite only substantively appears attractive, we argue that mandating substantive citing may have underappreciated consequences on the allocation of attention and dynamism in scientific literatures. We develop a novel agent-based model in which agents cite substantively and rhetorically. Agents first select papers to read based on their expected quality, read them and observe their actual quality, become influenced by those that are sufficiently good, and substantively cite them. Next, agents fill any remaining slots in the reference lists by (rhetorically) citing papers that support their narrative, regardless of whether they were actually influential. By turning rhetorical citing on-and-off, we find that rhetorical citing increases the correlation between quality and citations, increases citation churn, and reduces citation inequality. This occurs because rhetorical citing redistributes some citations from a stable set of elite-quality papers to a more dynamic set with high-to-moderate quality and high rhetorical value. Increasing the size of reference lists, often seen as an undesirable trend, amplifies the effects. In sum, rhetorical citing helps deconcentrate attention and makes it easier to displace incumbent ideas, so whether it is indeed undesirable depends on the metrics used to judge desirability.

Contemporary applications of machine learning in two-team e-sports and the superior expressivity of multi-agent generative adversarial networks raise important and overlooked theoretical questions regarding optimization in two-team games. Formally, two-team zero-sum games are defined as multi-player games where players are split into two competing sets of agents, each experiencing a utility identical to that of their teammates and opposite to that of the opposing team. We focus on the solution concept of Nash equilibria (NE). We first show that computing NE for this class of games is $\textit{hard}$ for the complexity class ${\mathrm{CLS}}$. To further examine the capabilities of online learning algorithms in games with full-information feedback, we propose a benchmark of a simple -- yet nontrivial -- family of such games. These games do not enjoy the properties used to prove convergence for relevant algorithms. In particular, we use a dynamical systems perspective to demonstrate that gradient descent-ascent, its optimistic variant, optimistic multiplicative weights update, and extra gradient fail to converge (even locally) to a Nash equilibrium. On a brighter note, we propose a first-order method that leverages control theory techniques and under some conditions enjoys last-iterate local convergence to a Nash equilibrium. We also believe our proposed method is of independent interest for general min-max optimization.

A world where AI agents, woven into a vibrant tapestry, come together in harmony to solve the most complex problems known to mankind. Welcome to the age of the AgentChain - a brave new world, where blockchain is merely a relic of the past. In the not-so-distant past, blockchain technology emerged as a groundbreaking innovation, decentralizing and securing transactions like never before. But as we venture further into the realm of artificial intelligence, the time has come to embrace the next step in this evolution. Enter the AgentChain: a sophisticated, interconnected web of AI agents that combines the power of Large Language Models (LLMs) with disposable decision-makers, all working together for the greater good.

Swarm robotics systems have the potential to transform warfighting in urban environments, but until now have not seen large-scale field testing. We present the Rapid Integration Swarming Ecosystem (RISE), a platform for future multi-agent research and deployment. RISE enables rapid integration of third-party swarm tactics and behaviors, which was demonstrated using both physical and simulated swarms. Our physical testbed is composed of more than 250 networked heterogeneous agents and has been extensively tested in mock warfare scenarios at five urban combat training ranges. RISE implements live, virtual, constructive simulation capabilities to allow the use of both virtual and physical agents simultaneously, while our "fluid fidelity" simulation enables adaptive scaling between low and high fidelity simulation levels based on dynamic runtime requirements. Both virtual and physical agents are controlled with a unified gesture-based interface that enables a greater than 150:1 agent-to-operator ratio. Through this interface, we enable efficient swarm-based mission execution. RISE translates mission needs to robot actuation with rapid tactic integration, a reliable testbed, and efficient operation.

Solution concepts such as Nash Equilibria, Correlated Equilibria, and Coarse Correlated Equilibria are useful components for many multiagent machine learning algorithms. Unfortunately, solving a normal-form game could take prohibitive or non-deterministic time to converge, and could fail. We introduce the Neural Equilibrium Solver which utilizes a special equivariant neural network architecture to approximately solve the space of all games of fixed shape, buying speed and determinism. We define a flexible equilibrium selection framework, that is capable of uniquely selecting an equilibrium that minimizes relative entropy, or maximizes welfare. The network is trained without needing to generate any supervised training data. We show remarkable zero-shot generalization to larger games. We argue that such a network is a powerful component for many possible multiagent algorithms.

Informally, a distributed system is grassroots if it can have autonomous, independently-deployed instances -- geographically and over time -- that can interoperate once interconnected. An example would be a serverless smartphone-based social network supporting multiple independently-budding communities that merge when a member of one community becomes also a member of another. Grassroots applications are potentially important as they may provide a foundation for digital sovereignty, which we interpret as the ability of people to conduct their social, economic, civic, and political lives in the digital realm solely using the networked computing devices they own and operate (e.g., smartphones), free of third-party control, surveillance, manipulation, coercion, or value-extraction (e.g., by global digital platforms such as Facebook or Bitcoin). Here, we formalize the notion of grassroots distributed systems and grassroots implementations; specify an abstract grassroots dissemination protocol; describe and prove an implementation of grassroots dissemination for the model of asynchrony; extend the implementation to mobile (address-changing) devices that communicate via an unreliable network (e.g. smartphones using UDP); and illustrate how grassroots dissemination can realize applications that support digital sovereignty -- grassroots social networking and sovereign cryptocurrencies. The mathematical construction employs distributed multiagent transition systems to define the notions of grassroots protocols and grassroots implementations, to specify grassroots dissemination protocols and their implementation, and to prove their correctness. The implementation uses the blocklace -- a partially-ordered DAG-like generalization of the blockchain.

In recent weeks, the field of autonomous AI agents has grown exponentially, and the idea of AGI (artififcial general intelligence) has become an increasingly popular topic. An AI project inspired by AutoGPT and BabyAGI, provides a unique opportunity to explore the potential of these agents firsthand. In this article, we'll delve into the exciting features of free demo, discuss the importance of AI alignment projects, and reveal how you can try this groundbreaking technology for free. Question: "How do I increase Substack subscribers?" The AI agent can perform a variety of tasks, such as conducting market analysis, finding and negotiating a lease, or growing a Substack Subscriber Base.

The most relevant problems in discounted reinforcement learning involve estimating the mean of a function under the stationary distribution of a Markov reward process, such as the expected return in policy evaluation, or the policy gradient in policy optimization. In practice, these estimates are produced through a finite-horizon episodic sampling, which neglects the mixing properties of the Markov process. It is mostly unclear how this mismatch between the practical and the ideal setting affects the estimation, and the literature lacks a formal study on the pitfalls of episodic sampling, and how to do it optimally. In this paper, we present a minimax lower bound on the discounted mean estimation problem that explicitly connects the estimation error with the mixing properties of the Markov process and the discount factor. Then, we provide a statistical analysis on a set of notable estimators and the corresponding sampling procedures, which includes the finite-horizon estimators often used in practice. Crucially, we show that estimating the mean by directly sampling from the discounted kernel of the Markov process brings compelling statistical properties w.r.t. the alternative estimators, as it matches the lower bound without requiring a careful tuning of the episode horizon.

Mixed incentives among a population with multiagent teams has been shown to have advantages over a fully cooperative system; however, discovering the best mixture of incentives or team structure is a difficult and dynamic problem. We propose a framework where individual learning agents self-regulate their configuration of incentives through various parts of their reward function. This work extends previous work by giving agents the ability to dynamically update their group alignment during learning and by allowing teammates to have different group alignment. Our model builds on ideas from hierarchical reinforcement learning and meta-learning to learn the configuration of a reward function that supports the development of a behavioral policy. We provide preliminary results in a commonly studied multiagent environment and find that agents can achieve better global outcomes by self-tuning their respective group alignment parameters.

Classical paradigms for distributed learning, such as federated or decentralized gradient descent, employ consensus mechanisms to enforce homogeneity among agents. While these strategies have proven effective in i.i.d. scenarios, they can result in significant performance degradation when agents follow heterogeneous objectives or data. Distributed strategies for multitask learning, on the other hand, induce relationships between agents in a more nuanced manner, and encourage collaboration without enforcing consensus. We develop a generalization of the exact diffusion algorithm for subspace constrained multitask learning over networks, and derive an accurate expression for its mean-squared deviation when utilizing noisy gradient approximations. We verify numerically the accuracy of the predicted performance expressions, as well as the improved performance of the proposed approach over alternatives based on approximate projections.