Abstract
ACCESS—the Agent-based Causal simulator with Cognitive, Environmental, and Social System factors—is an agent-based simulation of an alternate world that is designed to test social science methodologies’ abilities to explain, predict, and prescribe policies for complex social systems. The ACCESS world model includes behaviors based on behavioral and cognitive sciences within and across individuals, groups, and the society to create a multi-level model that exhibits emergent phenomena. In this paper, we detail the logic underlying our conceptualization of the entities (individuals, groups, and the world) and their interactions. We also provide details on how we used the ACCESS model to challenge and score social scientist teams’ abilities to explain, predict, and prescribe in the artificial world as part of the DARPA Ground Truth program.
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Notes
The original plan for this feature was to add complexity to the world by modifying it to be a payout received only by low wealth agents and have the amount change based on a separate set of policies that all agents would vote on. The model was deemed to be sufficiently complex before this feature was implemented, though, so while the fixed income remained, it represents a rather innocuous action in the world.
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Acknowledgements
This document does not contain technology or technical data controlled under either the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. This material is based upon work supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Contract No. HR001118C0022. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the DARPA.
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Rager, S., Leung, A., Pinegar, S. et al. Groups, governance, and greed: the ACCESS world model. Comput Math Organ Theory 29, 52–83 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-021-09352-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-021-09352-x