Cooperation in large‐scale human societies — What, if anything, makes it unique, and how did it evolve?
Journal Article
Powers, S. T., van Schaik, C. P., & Lehmann, L. (2021)
Cooperation in large‐scale human societies — What, if anything, makes it unique, and how did it evolve?. Evolutionary Anthropology, 30(4), 280-293. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21909
To resolve the major controversy about why prosocial behaviors persist in large-scale human societies, we propose that two questions need to be answered. First, how do social ...
When to (or not to) trust intelligent machines: Insights from an evolutionary game theory analysis of trust in repeated games
Journal Article
Han, T. A., Perrett, C., & Powers, S. T. (2021)
When to (or not to) trust intelligent machines: Insights from an evolutionary game theory analysis of trust in repeated games. Cognitive Systems Research, 68, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2021.02.003
The actions of intelligent agents, such as chatbots, recommender systems, and virtual assistants are typically not fully transparent to the user. Consequently , users take the...
A mechanism to promote social behaviour in household load balancing
Conference Proceeding
Brooks, N. A., Powers, S. T., & Borg, J. M. (2020)
A mechanism to promote social behaviour in household load balancing. In Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2020 (ALIFE 2020). , (95-103). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00290
Reducing the peak energy consumption of households is essential for the effective use of renewable energy sources, in order to ensure that as much household demand as possible...
From disorganized equality to efficient hierarchy: how group size drives the evolution of hierarchy in human societies
Journal Article
Perret, C., Hart, E., & Powers, S. T. (2020)
From disorganized equality to efficient hierarchy: how group size drives the evolution of hierarchy in human societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1928), https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0693
A manifest trend is that larger and more productive human groups shift from distributed to centralized decision-making. Voluntary theories propose that human groups shift to h...
Being a leader or being the leader: The evolution of institutionalised hierarchy
Conference Proceeding
Perret, C., Hart, E., & Powers, S. T. (2019)
Being a leader or being the leader: The evolution of institutionalised hierarchy. In ALIFE 2019: The 2019 Conference on Artificial Life, (171-178). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00158
Human social hierarchy has the unique characteristic of existing in two forms. Firstly, as an informal hierarchy where leaders and followers are implicitly defined by their pe...
Increasing Trust in Meta-Heuristics by Using MAP-Elites
Conference Proceeding
Urquhart, N., Guckert, M., & Powers, S. (2019)
Increasing Trust in Meta-Heuristics by Using MAP-Elites. In GECCO '19 Companion, (1345-1348). https://doi.org/10.1145/3319619.3326816
Intelligent AI systems using approaches containing emergent elements often encounter acceptance problems. Results do not get sufficiently explained and the procedure itself ca...
An Agent Based Technique for Improving Multi-Stakeholder Optimisation Problems
Conference Proceeding
Urquhart, N., & Powers, S. T. (2019)
An Agent Based Technique for Improving Multi-Stakeholder Optimisation Problems. In PAAMS 2019: Advances in Practical Applications of Survivable Agents and Multi-Agent Systems: The PAAMS Collection: vol 1 – Main track and Demos proceedings, 285-289. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24209-1_32
We present an agent based framework for improving multi-stakeholder optimisation problems, which we define as optimisation problems where the solution is utilised by a number ...
Finding Fair Negotiation Algorithms to Reduce Peak Electricity Consumption in Micro Grids
Conference Proceeding
Powers, S. T., Meanwell, O., & Cai, Z. (2019)
Finding Fair Negotiation Algorithms to Reduce Peak Electricity Consumption in Micro Grids. In PAAMS 2019: Advances in Practical Applications of Survivable Agents and Multi-Agent Systems: The PAAMS Collection, 269-272. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24209-1_28
Reducing peak electricity consumption is important to maximise use of renewable energy sources, and reduce the total amount of capacity required on a grid. Most approaches use...
Simulating the actions of commuters using a multi-agent system
Journal Article
Urquhart, N., Powers, S., Wall, Z., Fonzone, A., Ge, J., & Polhill, G. (2019)
Simulating the actions of commuters using a multi-agent system. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 22(2), https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.4007
The activity of commuting to and from a place of work affects not only those travelling but also wider society through their contribution to congestion and pollution. It is de...
Trusting Intelligent Machines: Deepening Trust Within Socio-Technical Systems
Journal Article
Andras, P., Esterle, L., Guckert, M., Anh Han, T., Lewis, P. R., Milanovic, K., …Wells, S. (2018)
Trusting Intelligent Machines: Deepening Trust Within Socio-Technical Systems. IEEE technology & society magazine, 37(4), 76-83. https://doi.org/10.1109/MTS.2018.2876107
Intelligent machines have reached capabilities that go beyond a level that a human being can fully comprehend without sufficiently detailed understanding of the underlying mec...