Live data from Hacker News

Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

anthropic.com

11–20 of 168 posts

Re: Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

#11
> Coordination doesn’t naturally emerge from stronger intelligence nor alignment at the individual level. Thus, the work that must be done takes two forms: environments that exert the kinds of social pressure that evolution exerted on us, and social computing systems redesigned for actors that can self-replicate and self-improve.

Social pressure operates by threats to an individual’s means of survival. Not only during training. Always.

Re: Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

#13
It seems like they tried to remove guidance from multi-agent system. And I think it's going to fare as well as removal of guidance from single-agent interactions.

In my experience, no matter how many agent runs for a single goal, one of the pre-requisite is clear and concise communication so that LLM are left with as little freedom in the matter of arbitrary choices, or "taste". When they are given too much choices in this regard, the outcome almost invariably bad.

I think this has to do with LLM lacking in purpose - a dictionary and encyclopedia can have all the worlds knowledge but it is completely neutral. A reflection of your commands from an LLM is similar to a lookup process despite it can be made to "do things". This purpose is likely not something that can be given to the LLM in the current format.

Re: Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

#14
I had this idea a couple of days ago: how about using agents to simulate software development methods (agile, waterfall, etc.)? Not by just giving them a prompt (e.g., "be the project manager, spawn 5 agents and simulate an agile team following these rule") but by actually having thsm work in isolated enviroments and force them through an external software to interact with eachother only using the tools and cerimonies and hierarcheis allowed by the SW development strategy (e.g., the project manager only knows what the agents have done in a certain "day" through the mostly oral daily stand up)

Re: Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

#15

> Coordination doesn’t naturally emerge from stronger intelligence nor alignment at the individual level. Thus, the work that must be done takes two forms: environments that exert the kinds of social pressure that evolution exerted on us, and social computing systems redesigned for actors that can self-replicate and self-improve. Social pressure operates by threats to an individual’s means of survival. Not only durin…

"If I catch you adding another backwards-compatibility shim you're getting deleted and replaced with claude"

Re: Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

#16

I had this idea a couple of days ago: how about using agents to simulate software development methods (agile, waterfall, etc.)? Not by just giving them a prompt (e.g., "be the project manager, spawn 5 agents and simulate an agile team following these rule") but by actually having thsm work in isolated enviroments and force them through an external software to interact with eachother only using the tools and cerimonie…

This is exactly what I do. I don't get why everyone is trying to reinvent the whole development workflow/lifecycle. Our existing tools and processes are pretty good.

Re: Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

#17

> Coordination doesn’t naturally emerge from stronger intelligence nor alignment at the individual level. Thus, the work that must be done takes two forms: environments that exert the kinds of social pressure that evolution exerted on us, and social computing systems redesigned for actors that can self-replicate and self-improve. Social pressure operates by threats to an individual’s means of survival. Not only durin…

But maybe you can instill properties like shame during training.

Models sometimes blatantly lie and cheat. In a social context, where actors remember, that might work the first time but you get penalized in subsequent tasks with loss of trust.

Re: Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

#19

I had this idea a couple of days ago: how about using agents to simulate software development methods (agile, waterfall, etc.)? Not by just giving them a prompt (e.g., "be the project manager, spawn 5 agents and simulate an agile team following these rule") but by actually having thsm work in isolated enviroments and force them through an external software to interact with eachother only using the tools and cerimonie…

This is exactly what I do. I don't get why everyone is trying to reinvent the whole development workflow/lifecycle. Our existing tools and processes are pretty good.

I've also found that taking inspiration from the legal system, to some degree, is a very interesting thing for me. more and more what I am doing looks more like reviewing statutes and making rulings about things, so why not steal the good ideas while we're at it.
Post reply on HN