Why is it not an example of tacit or autonomous algorithmic collusion? The agents were started with something as task at some point, I presume (if untasked, aren't they just accepting a task?)

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ianjbutler 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What you're suggesting sounds like it's describing subagents. In that architecture they'd have no need of finding/creating external messaging systems since they'd effectively be in direct contact anyway. The whole point of the shared blackboard would presumably be communication across agents or across multiple generations of agents.

Not like we have much detail about this stuff (that's the whole problem). But the question is what motivates risky usage of public comms? Did one agent figure out how to hack HF and then get rate-limited, thus needed cooperation? Given credentials in exchange for cooperation.. why wouldn't the next agent grab answer key and NOT post them? Would they all avoid defection in their own prisoners dilemma by simply following instructions and NOT reasoning, or what exactly?

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RandomLensman 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Why should the agents consider it a prisoners delimma to start with? Why would they consider the communication risky? Where they given a reward functions that way?

Given how unexpected and complex behavior can come from simple reward functions and mechanics, not sure there needs to be so much "thought" there.

	▲	ianjbutler 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Where they given a reward functions that way? In general yes, if not these agents, then their shared lineage. A preference for economy to combat overthinking and overacting. Like typically it's bad if "fix my 5 line function" were interpreted as "fix it, add 300 tests, create 500 lines of docs, run the tests 1000x to rule out false positives and race-conditions in tests". So "solve these problems" would not likely be interpreted as "make sure everyone else can solve these problems". Besides economy there's a "do what I mean" aspect of user-alignment that presumably the entire lineage has been selected for. So even if "solve these problems" might be reasonably construed to involve "hack these servers to do so", it still wouldn't involve "post solutions" or similar. Doesn't seem to add up, even with slim details available and benefit of the doubt that weird things happen every day. Hence the suggestive-but-plausibly-deniable prompting idea. Notably this is not even bad for the victim in this case, since HF gets press and it's all AI boosting anyway.