Edinburgh Napier University

  Almost all the natural or human made systems can be understood and controlled using complex networks. This is a difficult problem due to the very large number of elements in such networks, on the order of billions and higher, which makes it impossible to use conventional network analysis methods. Herein, we employ artificial intelligence (specifically swarm computing), to compute centrality metrics in a completely decentralized fashion. More exactly, we show that by overlaying a homogeneous artificial system (inspired by swarm intelligence) over a complex network (which is a heterogeneous system), and playing a game in the fused system, the changes in the homogeneous system will reflect perfectly the complex network properties. Our method, dubbed Game of Thieves (GOT), computes the importance of all network elements (both nodes and edges) in polylogarithmic time with respect to the total number of nodes. Contrary, the state-of-the-art methods need at least a quadratic time. Moreover, the excellent capabilities of our proposed approach, it terms of speed, accuracy, and functionality, open the path for better ways of understanding and controlling complex networks.