Sharp transition towards shared vocabularies in multi-agent systems
Sharp transition towards shared vocabularies in multi-agent systems
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DOI：
10.1088/1742-5468/2006/06/p06014
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发表时间：
2006-06-01
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
Steels, Luc
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Baronchelli, Andrea;Felici, Maddalena;Steels, Luc
什么过程可以解释大量人口如何能够在没有全球协调的情况下集中使用特定单词或语法结构？探讨这个问题有助于理解为什么新的语言结构通常会沿着一条S形曲线传播，并突然过渡到全球一致。它还有助于分析和设计支持或协调自组织通信系统的新技术，例如最近的网络社会标记系统。本文介绍并研究了一个无中心控制的、进行语言游戏的通信自治主体的微观模型。我们表明，该系统经历了无序/有序的过渡，通过一个尖锐的对称性破缺过程，达到一个共同的约定。在转换之前，系统建立了非平凡的标度不变相关性，例如在竞争同义词的分布中，显示出类似齐普夫定律。这些相关性使系统准备好向共同约定过渡，在集体行为的时间尺度上观察，随着系统规模的增加，这种约定变得越来越尖锐。这一令人惊讶的结果不仅解释了为什么人类语言可以扩展到非常大的人群，而且还提出了优化人工符号动力学的方法。
What processes can explain how very large populations are able to converge on the use of a particular word or grammatical construction without global coordination? Answering this question helps to understand why new language constructs usually propagate along an S-shaped curve with a rather sudden transition towards global agreement. It also helps to analyse and design new technologies that support or orchestrate self-organizing communication systems, such as recent social tagging systems for the web. The article introduces and studies a microscopic model of communicating autonomous agents performing language games without any central control. We show that the system undergoes a disorder/order transition, going through a sharp symmetry breaking process to reach a shared set of conventions. Before the transition, the system builds up non-trivial scale-invariant correlations, for instance in the distribution of competing synonyms, which display a Zipf-like law. These correlations make the system ready for the transition towards shared conventions, which, observed on the timescale of collective behaviours, becomes sharper and sharper with system size. This surprising result not only explains why human language can scale up to very large populations but also suggests ways to optimize artificial semiotic dynamics.