Artificial Society

A new European Commission funded project has been announced, named NEW TIES. It’s purpose is to further the study of natural social processes and advance the science of artificial intelligence, by creating a virtual world and releasing autonomous software agents into it so that they will evolve and develop independently of their creators. It is hoped that the agents will learn to cooperate without being programmed to do so, thanks to challenging environments that involve seasonal variation, competion for resources and so on.