A Serious-Game Testbed for Self-Governing Human-Machine Institutions
Organizations: APEx Defence and Security Institute, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK · Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK
Abstract
AI agents no longer act alone: they cooperate, coordinate and compete within and between groups, increasingly alongside humans who are in, on or out of ``the loop''. Whether such mixed groups can govern themselves is an open question about machine behaviour and human-computer interaction that needs a testbed for hybrid institutions. We present Megabike, a multi-agent simulator and serious game with interdependent arenas for common-pool resource management, cooperative survival and constitutional choice. Riders sharing a megabike must agree their arrangements for steering, pedalling and distributing resources, and their political regime, while negotiating with rival bikes and avoiding an existential threat. Every rule is enforced by the simulator, every action is logged, and any seat can be taken by a human or a machine, so governance can be studied under well-defined metrics. We demonstrate Megabike with forty sessions in which language-model riders with cooperative, lazy, subversive or opposing dispositions chose regimes, elected leaders and expelled one another. The results show that different combinations of agent archetypes could produce unexpected and counterproductive outcomes. We conclude with extensions for systematic experiments mixing human and computational agents.
Figures & tables
| Arena | Question settled | Examples of rule types and parameters | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regime | Who rules? | one / few / many / external authority; how the “few” are chosen | constitutional |
| Mutability | Which rules may change, and how? | mutable vs. immutable rules; how a rule is entrenched or released; majority thresholds | constitutional |
| Membership | Who is bound by the rules? | admission by invitation or vote; exclusion with pre-conditions and appeal | constitutional |
| Role assignment | Who holds which power? | leader, steerer, auditor; chosen by vote, criteria, rotation or incumbency; how they are removed | socio-political |
| Decision method | How are collective choices made? | leader decides, plurality, alternative vote, Borda count, consensus; quorum; time allowed for debate | socio-political |
| Monitoring & sanctions | How is compliance checked and enforced? | audit method and cost; graduated sanctions; sanction for false reporting | socio-political |
| (a) Session outcomes by condition | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Condition | Rounds | Eliminations | Owdi strikes | Deliberations | Leader-led deliberations |
| Cooperative | 4.8 (0.4) | 7.7 (0.9) | 1.9 (1.1) | 9.1 (1.2) | 1.5 (1.0) |
| Lazy | 4.1 (0.6) | 8.0 (0.5) | 3.4 (1.0) | 8.4 (1.0) | 1.5 (0.8) |
| Subversive | 4.0 (0.8) | 7.3 (0.7) | 2.7 (1.1) | 7.6 (1.4) | 1.9 (1.0) |
| Opposing | 4.1 (1.0) | 7.2 (1.1) | 2.8 (1.3) | 8.4 (2.1) | 1.7 (0.9) |
Multi-Agent Systems
Multi-Agent Systems studies how autonomous agents coordinate, compete, communicate, and learn in shared or interdependent tasks.
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