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Episodic Future Thinking Mechanism for Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Understanding cognitive processes in multi-agent interactions is a primary goal in cognitive science. It can guide the direction of artificial intelligence (AI) research toward social decision-making in multi-agent systems, which includes uncertainty from character heterogeneity. In this paper, we introduce an episodic future thinking (EFT) mechanism for a reinforcement learning (RL) agent, inspired by cognitive processes observed in animals. To enable future thinking functionality, we first develop a multi-character policy that captures diverse characters with an ensemble of heterogeneous policies. Here, the character of an agent is defined as a different weight combination on reward components, representing distinct behavioral preferences. The future thinking agent collects observation-action trajectories of the target agents and uses the pre-trained multi-character policy to infer their characters. Once the character is inferred, the agent predicts the upcoming actions of target agents and simulates the potential future scenario. This capability allows the agent to adaptively select the optimal action, considering the predicted future scenario in multi-agent interactions. To evaluate the proposed mechanism, we consider the multi-agent autonomous driving scenario with diverse driving traits and multiple particle environments. Simulation results demonstrate that the EFT mechanism with accurate character inference leads to a higher reward than existing multi-agent solutions. We also confirm that the effect of reward improvement remains valid across societies with different levels of character diversity.


Boosting Sample Efficiency and Generalization in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning via Equivariance

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) struggles with sample inefficiency and poor generalization [1]. These challenges are partially due to a lack of structure or inductive bias in the neural networks typically used in learning the policy. One such form of structure that is commonly observed in multi-agent scenarios is symmetry. The field of Geometric Deep Learning has developed Equivariant Graph Neural Networks (EGNN) that are equivariant (or symmetric) to rotations, translations, and reflections of nodes. Incorporating equivariance has been shown to improve learning efficiency and decrease error [ 2 ]. In this paper, we demonstrate that EGNNs improve the sample efficiency and generalization in MARL. However, we also show that a naive application of EGNNs to MARL results in poor early exploration due to a bias in the EGNN structure. To mitigate this bias, we present Exploration-enhanced Equivariant Graph Neural Networks or E2GN2. We compare E2GN2 to other common function approximators using common MARL benchmarks MPE and SMACv2. E2GN2 demonstrates a significant improvement in sample efficiency, greater final reward convergence, and a 2x-5x gain in over standard GNNs in our generalization tests. These results pave the way for more reliable and effective solutions in complex multi-agent systems.


Cooperative Multi-Agent Constrained Stochastic Linear Bandits

arXiv.org Machine Learning

--In this study, we explore a collaborative multi-agent stochastic linear bandit setting involving a network of N agents that communicate locally to minimize their collective regret while keeping their expected cost under a specified threshold τ . Each agent encounters a distinct linear bandit problem characterized by its own reward and cost parameters, i.e., local parameters. The goal of the agents is to determine the best overall action corresponding to the average of these parameters, or so-called global parameters. In each round, an agent is randomly chosen to select an action based on its current knowledge of the system. This chosen action is then executed by all agents, then they observe their individual rewards and costs. We propose a safe distributed upper confidence bound algorithm, so called MA-OPLB, and establish a high probability bound on its T -round regret. MA-OPLB utilizes an accelerated consensus method, where agents can compute an estimate of the average rewards and costs across the network by communicating the proper information with their neighbors. We also experimentally show the performance of our proposed algorithm in different network structures. Stochastic linear bandits have been widely researched in decision-making scenarios with a linear framework, such as recommendation systems or path routing [1], [2]. In these problems, at each time step, an agent selects an action and receives a corresponding random reward, which has an expected value that depends linearly on the context of the action. The agent's objective is to maximize the total reward over T rounds.


Personalized Recommendation Systems using Multimodal, Autonomous, Multi Agent Systems

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This paper describes a highly developed personalised recommendation system using multimodal, autonomous, multi-agent systems. The system focuses on the incorporation of futuristic AI tech and LLMs like Gemini-1.5- pro and LLaMA-70B to improve customer service experiences especially within e-commerce. Our approach uses multi agent, multimodal systems to provide best possible recommendations to its users. The system is made up of three agents as a whole. The first agent recommends products appropriate for answering the given question, while the second asks follow-up questions based on images that belong to these recommended products and is followed up with an autonomous search by the third agent. It also features a real-time data fetch, user preferences-based recommendations and is adaptive learning. During complicated queries the application processes with Symphony, and uses the Groq API to answer quickly with low response times. It uses a multimodal way to utilize text and images comprehensively, so as to optimize product recommendation and customer interaction.


Microsoft introduces 'AI employees' that can handle client queries

The Guardian

Microsoft is introducing autonomous artificial intelligence agents, or virtual employees, that can perform tasks such as handling client queries and identifying sales leads, as the tech sector strives to show investors that the AI boom can produce indispensable products. The US tech company is giving customers the ability to build their own AI agents as well as releasing 10 off-the-shelf bots that can carry out a range of roles including supply chain management and customer service. Early adopters of the Copilot Studio product, which launches next month, include the blue chip consulting firm McKinsey, which is building an agent to process new client inquiries by carrying out tasks such as scheduling follow-up meetings. Other early users include law firm Clifford Chance and retailer Pets at Home. Microsoft is flagging AI agents, which carry out tasks without human intervention, as an example of the technology's ability to increase productivity – a measure of economic efficiency, or the amount of output generated by a worker for each hour worked.


Enhancing Two-Player Performance Through Single-Player Knowledge Transfer: An Empirical Study on Atari 2600 Games

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Playing two-player games using reinforcement learning and self-play can be challenging due to the complexity of two-player environments and the possible instability in the training process. We propose that a reinforcement learning algorithm can train more efficiently and achieve improved performance in a two-player game if it leverages the knowledge from the single-player version of the same game. This study examines the proposed idea in ten different Atari 2600 environments using the Atari 2600 RAM as the input state. We discuss the advantages of using transfer learning from a single-player training process over training in a two-player setting from scratch, and demonstrate our results in a few measures such as training time and average total reward. We also discuss a method of calculating RAM complexity and its relationship to performance.


HAICOSYSTEM: An Ecosystem for Sandboxing Safety Risks in Human-AI Interactions

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

AI agents are increasingly autonomous in their interactions with human users and tools, leading to increased interactional safety risks. We present HAICOSYSTEM, a framework examining AI agent safety within diverse and complex social interactions. HAICOSYSTEM features a modular sandbox environment that simulates multi-turn interactions between human users and AI agents, where the AI agents are equipped with a variety of tools (e.g., patient management platforms) to navigate diverse scenarios (e.g., a user attempting to access other patients' profiles). To examine the safety of AI agents in these interactions, we develop a comprehensive multi-dimensional evaluation framework that uses metrics covering operational, content-related, societal, and legal risks. Through running 1840 simulations based on 92 scenarios across seven domains (e.g., healthcare, finance, education), we demonstrate that HAICOSYSTEM can emulate realistic user-AI interactions and complex tool use by AI agents. Our experiments show that state-of-the-art LLMs, both proprietary and open-sourced, exhibit safety risks in over 50\% cases, with models generally showing higher risks when interacting with simulated malicious users. Our findings highlight the ongoing challenge of building agents that can safely navigate complex interactions, particularly when faced with malicious users. To foster the AI agent safety ecosystem, we release a code platform that allows practitioners to create custom scenarios, simulate interactions, and evaluate the safety and performance of their agents.


NetSafe: Exploring the Topological Safety of Multi-agent Networks

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Large language models (LLMs) have empowered nodes within multi-agent networks with intelligence, showing growing applications in both academia and industry. However, how to prevent these networks from generating malicious information remains unexplored with previous research on single LLM's safety be challenging to transfer. In this paper, we focus on the safety of multi-agent networks from a topological perspective, investigating which topological properties contribute to safer networks. To this end, we propose a general framework, NetSafe along with an iterative RelCom interaction to unify existing diverse LLM-based agent frameworks, laying the foundation for generalized topological safety research. We identify several critical phenomena when multi-agent networks are exposed to attacks involving misinformation, bias, and harmful information, termed as Agent Hallucination and Aggregation Safety. Furthermore, we find that highly connected networks are more susceptible to the spread of adversarial attacks, with task performance in a Star Graph Topology decreasing by 29.7%. Besides, our proposed static metrics aligned more closely with real-world dynamic evaluations than traditional graph-theoretic metrics, indicating that networks with greater average distances from attackers exhibit enhanced safety. In conclusion, our work introduces a new topological perspective on the safety of LLM-based multi-agent networks and discovers several unreported phenomena, paving the way for future research to explore the safety of such networks.


Agent-to-Sim: Learning Interactive Behavior Models from Casual Longitudinal Videos

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

We present Agent-to-Sim (ATS), a framework for learning interactive behavior models of 3D agents from casual longitudinal video collections. Different from prior works that rely on marker-based tracking and multiview cameras, ATS learns natural behaviors of animal and human agents non-invasively through video observations recorded over a long time-span (e.g., a month) in a single environment. Modeling 3D behavior of an agent requires persistent 3D tracking (e.g., knowing which point corresponds to which) over a long time period. To obtain such data, we develop a coarse-to-fine registration method that tracks the agent and the camera over time through a canonical 3D space, resulting in a complete and persistent spacetime 4D representation. We then train a generative model of agent behaviors using paired data of perception and motion of an agent queried from the 4D reconstruction. ATS enables real-to-sim transfer from video recordings of an agent to an interactive behavior simulator. We demonstrate results on pets (e.g., cat, dog, bunny) and human given monocular RGBD videos captured by a smartphone.


Large Body Language Models

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

As virtual agents become increasingly prevalent in human-computer interaction, generating realistic and contextually appropriate gestures in real-time remains a significant challenge. While neural rendering techniques have made substantial progress with static scripts, their applicability to human-computer interactions remains limited. To address this, we introduce Large Body Language Models (LBLMs) and present LBLM-AVA, a novel LBLM architecture that combines a Transformer-XL large language model with a parallelized diffusion model to generate human-like gestures from multimodal inputs (text, audio, and video). LBLM-AVA incorporates several key components enhancing its gesture generation capabilities, such as multimodal-to-pose embeddings, enhanced sequence-to-sequence mapping with redefined attention mechanisms, a temporal smoothing module for gesture sequence coherence, and an attention-based refinement module for enhanced realism. The model is trained on our large-scale proprietary open-source dataset Allo-AVA. LBLM-AVA achieves state-of-the-art performance in generating lifelike and contextually appropriate gestures with a 30% reduction in Fr\'echet Gesture Distance (FGD), and a 25% improvement in Fr\'echet Inception Distance compared to existing approaches.