Impure simplicial complexes are a powerful tool to model multi-agent epistemic situations where agents may die, but it is difficult to define a satisfactory semantics for the ordinary propositional modal language on such models, since many conceptually dubious expressions involving dead agents can be expressed in this language. In this paper, we introduce a term-modal language with assignment operators, in which such conceptually dubious expressions are syntactically excluded. We define both simplicial semantics and first-order Kripke semantics for this language, characterize their respective expressivity through notions of bisimulation, and show that the two semantics are equivalent when we consider a special class of first order Kripke models called local epistemic models. We also offer a complete axiomatization for the epistemic logic based on this language, and show that our language has a notion of assignment normal form. Finally, we discuss the behavior of a kind of intensional distributed knowledge that can be naturally expressed in our language.

The idea of using belief bases as formal semantics for multi-agent epistemic logic was first introduced in [26] and further developed in [27, 28]. This approach aligns with the sentential (or syntactic) perspective on knowledge representation [21, 13, 33, 20], which holds th at an agent's body of knowledge should be represented as a set of sentences in a formal language. The key novelty of belief base semantics, compared to traditional epistemic logic semantics based on multi-relational Kripke models [31, 12], lies in two main aspects. First, a possible world (or state) in a mo del is not treated as a primitive entity but is instead composed of the agents' belief bases and a valu ation of propositional atoms. Second, the agents' accessibility relations are not explicitly par t of the model but are determined a posteriori from their belief bases.

Distributed knowledge is a key concept in the standard epistemic logic of knowledge-that. In this paper, we propose a corresponding notion of distributed knowledge-how and study its logic. Our framework generalizes two existing traditions in the logic of know-how: the individual-based multi-step framework and the coalition-based single-step framework. In particular, we assume a group can accomplish more than what its individuals can jointly do. The distributed knowledge-how is based on the distributed knowledge-that of a group whose multi-step strategies derive from distributed actions that subgroups can collectively perform. As the main result, we obtain a sound and strongly complete proof system for our logic of distributed knowledge-how, which closely resembles the logic of distributed knowledge-that in both the axioms and the proof method of completeness.

Aumann's famous Agreeing to Disagree Theorem states that if a group of agents share a common prior, update their beliefs by Bayesian conditioning based on private information, and have common knowledge of their posterior beliefs regarding some event, these posteriors must be identical. There is an elegant generalization of this theorem by Monderer and Samet, later refined by Neeman: if a group of agents share a common prior, update their beliefs using Bayesian conditioning on private information, and have common p-belief of their posteriors, these posteriors must be close (i.e., they cannot differ by more than 1 - p). Here, common p-belief generalizes the concept of common knowledge to probabilistic beliefs: agents commonly p-believe an event E if everyone believes E to at least degree p, everyone believes to at least degree p that everyone believes E to at least degree p, and so on. This paper further extends the Monderer-Samet-Neeman Agreement Theorem from classical probability measures to plausibility measures -- a very general framework introduced by Halpern that unifies many formal models of belief. To facilitate this extension, we provide a new proof of the Monderer-Samet-Neeman theorem in the classical setting. Building upon both the original proof and our new proof, we offer two different generalizations of the theorem to plausibility-based structures. We then apply these generalized results to several non-classical belief models, including conditional probability structures and lexicographic probability structures. Moreover, we show that whenever our generalized theorems do not apply, the Monderer-Samet-Neeman Agreement Theorem fails. These findings suggest that our results successfully identify the minimal conditions required for a belief model to satisfy the Monderer-Samet-Neeman Agreement Theorem.

We study the design of mechanisms under asymmetric awareness and information. While the mechanism designer cannot necessarily commit to a particular social choice function in the face of unawareness, she can at least commit to properties of social choice functions such as efficiency given ex post awareness. Assuming quasi-linear utilities and private values, we show that we can implement in conditional dominant strategies a social choice function that is utilitarian ex post efficient under pooled awareness without the need of the social planner being fully aware ex ante. To this end, we develop novel dynamic versions of Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanisms in which true types are revealed and subsequently elaborated at endogenous higher awareness levels. We explore how asymmetric awareness affects budget balance and participation constraints. We show that ex ante unforeseen contingencies are no excuse for deficits. Finally, we propose a dynamic elaboration reverse second price auction for efficient procurement of complex incompletely specified projects with budget balance and participation constraints.

Quantum networks are becoming increasingly important because of advancements in quantum computing and quantum sensing, such as recent developments in distributed quantum computing and federated quantum machine learning. Routing entanglement in quantum networks poses several fundamental as well as technical challenges, including the high dynamicity of quantum network links and the probabilistic nature of quantum operations. Consequently, designing hand-crafted heuristics is difficult and often leads to suboptimal performance, especially if global network topology information is unavailable. In this paper, we propose RELiQ, a reinforcement learning-based approach to entanglement routing that only relies on local information and iterative message exchange. Utilizing a graph neural network, RELiQ learns graph representations and avoids overfitting to specific network topologies - a prevalent issue for learning-based approaches. Our approach, trained on random graphs, consistently outperforms existing local information heuristics and learning-based approaches when applied to random and real-world topologies. When compared to global information heuristics, our method achieves similar or superior performance because of its rapid response to topology changes.

Designing proteins de novo with tailored structural, physicochemical, and functional properties remains a grand challenge in biotechnology, medicine, and materials science, due to the vastness of sequence space and the complex coupling between sequence, structure, and function. Current state-of-the-art generative methods, such as protein language models (PLMs) and diffusion-based architectures, often require extensive fine-tuning, task-specific data, or model reconfiguration to support objective-directed design, thereby limiting their flexibility and scalability. To overcome these limitations, we present a decentralized, agent-based framework inspired by swarm intelligence for de novo protein design. In this approach, multiple large language model (LLM) agents operate in parallel, each assigned to a specific residue position. These agents iteratively propose context-aware mutations by integrating design objectives, local neighborhood interactions, and memory and feedback from previous iterations. This position-wise, decentralized coordination enables emergent design of diverse, well-defined sequences without reliance on motif scaffolds or multiple sequence alignments, validated with experiments on proteins with alpha helix and coil structures. Through analyses of residue conservation, structure-based metrics, and sequence convergence and embeddings, we demonstrate that the framework exhibits emergent behaviors and effective navigation of the protein fitness landscape. Our method achieves efficient, objective-directed designs within a few GPU-hours and operates entirely without fine-tuning or specialized training, offering a generalizable and adaptable solution for protein design. Beyond proteins, the approach lays the groundwork for collective LLM-driven design across biomolecular systems and other scientific discovery tasks.

The rapid development of large vision-language model (VLM) has greatly promoted the research of GUI agent. However, GUI agents still face significant challenges in handling long-horizon tasks. First, single-agent models struggle to balance high-level capabilities and low-level execution capability, facing prevalent issues of responsibility coupling and capability conflicts. Second, agents lack awareness of the task state, leading to progress loss in long-horizon tasks. To address these challenges, we propose a staged execution-feedback reinforcement learning algorithm. Unlike training a unified policy model, we focus on training high-level scheduling models. Specifically, we propose and train two agents: a Coordinator, responsible for the strategic planning and task decomposition; and a State Tracker, responsible for context compression and information management to maintain the task's state and coherence. Based on this, we built the Coordinator-Executor-State Tracker (CES) multi-agent framework, which can be integrated with any low-level Executor model, assisting the Executor in solving long-horizon tasks through task scheduling and state management. Experiments on long-horizon task benchmarks demonstrate that CES significantly enhances the system's planning and state management capabilities. Furthermore, analysis confirms that our trained high-level scheduling module is a generalizable, plug-and-play module that significantly enhances the long-horizon capabilities of various Executors. Code can be available at https://github.com/hehehahi4/CES.

The standard theory of model-free reinforcement learning assumes that the environment dynamics are stationary and that agents are decoupled from their environment, such that policies are treated as being separate from the world they inhabit. This leads to theoretical challenges in the multi-agent setting where the non-stationarity induced by the learning of other agents demands prospective learning based on prediction models. To accurately model other agents, an agent must account for the fact that those other agents are, in turn, forming beliefs about it to predict its future behavior, motivating agents to model themselves as part of the environment. Here, building upon foundational work on universal artificial intelligence (AIXI), we introduce a mathematical framework for prospective learning and embedded agency centered on self-prediction, where Bayesian RL agents predict both future perceptual inputs and their own actions, and must therefore resolve epistemic uncertainty about themselves as part of the universe they inhabit. We show that in multi-agent settings, self-prediction enables agents to reason about others running similar algorithms, leading to new game-theoretic solution concepts and novel forms of cooperation unattainable by classical decoupled agents. Moreover, we extend the theory of AIXI, and study universally intelligent embedded agents which start from a Solomonoff prior. We show that these idealized agents can form consistent mutual predictions and achieve infinite-order theory of mind, potentially setting a gold standard for embedded multi-agent learning.

Abstract-- Effective collective decision-making in swarm robotics often requires balancing exploration, communication and individual uncertainty estimation, especially in hazardous environments where direct measurements are limited or costly. We propose a decentralized Bayesian framework that enables a swarm of simple robots to identify the safer of two areas, each characterized by an unknown rate of hazardous events governed by a Poisson process. Robots employ a conjugate prior to gradually predict the times between events and derive confidence estimates to adapt their behavior . Our simulation results show that the robot swarm consistently chooses the correct area while reducing exposure to hazardous events by being sample-efficient. Compared to baseline heuristics, our proposed approach shows better performance in terms of safety and speed of convergence. The proposed scenario has potential to extend the current set of benchmarks in collective decision-making and our method has applications in adaptive risk-aware sampling and exploration in hazardous, dynamic environments. Collective decision-making under uncertainty is a fundamental challenge in multi-robot systems, including domains such as collective perception, environment classification, and spatial consensus [1]-[4]. Decentralized systems (e.g., robot swarms) operate under strict limitations on sensing, communication, and memory. Instead of sharing/storing complete observation histories, robots must maintain compact model representations of their knowledge. It is crucial to develop efficient strategies for collective decision-making, especially when observations are sparse, noisy [5], and gathered from stochastic processes [6]. This is typically characterized as a best-of-n problem [3], [7].