When resistance is useless: policing and the evolution of reproductive acquiescence in insect societies

In social groups composed of kin, inclusive fitness benefits can favor greater cooperation. Alternatively, cooperation can be enforced through the policing of less cooperative individuals. Here, we show that the effect of policing can be twofold: not only can it directly suppress individual selfishness, it can also entirely remove the incentive for individuals to act selfishly in the first place. We term such individual restraint in response to socially imposed policing "acquiescence" and illustrate the concept using examples drawn from the social Hymenoptera (the ants, bees, and wasps). Inclusive fitness models confirm that when a policing system is in place, individuals should be less tempted to act selfishly. This is shown to have important consequences for the resolution of conflict within their societies. For example, it can explain why in many species very few workers attempt to reproduce and why immature females usually do not attempt to develop as queens rather than workers. Although our analyses are primarily focused on the social insects, our conclusions are likely to be general and to apply to other societies as well

Regulating Highly Automated Robot Ecologies: Insights from Three User Studies

Highly automated robot ecologies (HARE), or societies of independent autonomous robots or agents, are rapidly becoming an important part of much of the world's critical infrastructure. As with human societies, regulation, wherein a governing body designs rules and processes for the society, plays an important role in ensuring that HARE meet societal objectives. However, to date, a careful study of interactions between a regulator and HARE is lacking. In this paper, we report on three user studies which give insights into how to design systems that allow people, acting as the regulatory authority, to effectively interact with HARE. As in the study of political systems in which governments regulate human societies, our studies analyze how interactions between HARE and regulators are impacted by regulatory power and individual (robot or agent) autonomy. Our results show that regulator power, decision support, and adaptive autonomy can each diminish the social welfare of HARE, and hint at how these seemingly desirable mechanisms can be designed so that they become part of successful HARE.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, to appear in the 5th International Conference on Human Agent Interaction (HAI-2017), Bielefeld, German