语言模型代理通过环境留痕实现技术演化,无需指令或分工。
SwarmWorld: Stigmergic technological evolution in societies of language-model agents

- 代理在空间环境中通过留痕协作,自发形成技术社会。
- 群体技术组合比独立搜索更广且更稳健,但单个最强成果仍由独立搜索胜出。
- 物理留痕驱动演化,适合研究去中心化智能与集体创新。
当个体通过共享环境协调时,集体智能可能涌现,使局部行动累积为持久的社会组织。语言模型代理为此提供了新载体,但多数多智能体系统依赖直接对话、预设角色或中心化流程。本文提出,初始同质的LLM代理在SwarmWorld中无需角色分配或操作指南,即可自组织成演化的技术社会。代理在空间环境中探索资源、测试材料、构建持久实体,并编写可执行控制器,由确定性模拟器在代理移除后评估其功能,应对未见干扰。SwarmWorld将认知与后果分离:代理在固定动作与材料框架内提出架构和控制器,而模拟世界决定实际功能。群体发展出比强基线(best-of-N独立搜索)更广泛、更鲁棒的技术组合,尽管独立搜索在最优单件成果上仍具竞争力。代理分化出探索、建造、维护与协调行为,随世界成熟动态转变。技术通过协作构建、可执行继承和持久的代理-实体网络积累,多数复用始于物理观察而非交流。显式文化机制增强协作,但功能收益取决于结果与时间尺度。仅靠物理留痕已能支撑有效社会,互动则推动持续技术生态,而非普遍更优的个体发明。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Collective intelligence can emerge when individuals coordinate through a shared environment, allowing local actions to accumulate into durable social organization. Language-model agents offer a new substrate for this process, yet most multi-agent systems rely on direct conversation, predefined roles, or centralized workflows. It remains unclear whether decentralized agents can build functional technologies and outperform independent search. Here, initially homogeneous LLM agents in SwarmWorld self-organize without assigned roles or recipes into evolving technological societies. Agents explore a spatial environment, process resources, test materials, construct persistent artifacts, and write executable controllers evaluated by a deterministic simulator under unseen disturbances after the agents are removed. SwarmWorld splits cognition from consequence: agents propose architectures and controllers within fixed action and material schemas, while the simulated world determines function. Shared societies develop broader, more resilient technological portfolios than a strong best-of-N isolated-search baseline, although isolated search remains competitive for the strongest artifact. Agents differentiate into exploration, construction, maintenance, and coordination behaviors, transitioning as the world matures. Technologies accumulate through collaborative construction, executable inheritance, and persistent agent-artifact networks, with most reuse beginning through physical observation rather than communication. Explicit cultural mechanisms amplify collaboration and organization, but functional benefits depend on outcome and timescale. Physical stigmergy alone supports capable societies, while interaction drives persistent technological ecologies rather than universally superior individual inventions.
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