JollyBot

Summary

Prisoners' Dilemma A.I. bot performing an ‘Olive Branch’ strategy focusing on attempting to cooperate whenever possible. The bot attempts to establish cooperation, even in cases where the opposing agent may appear hostile (e.g. always defect).

Description

The iterated prisoner’s dilemma is a classic two-person game which consists of a number of rounds. In each round, each person can either defect by taking $1 from a (common) pile, or cooperate by giving $2 from the same pile to the other person. A purely rational agent will optimise over his expected long-term payoffs, possibly by averaging over his expectations of his opponent’s type (or strategy).

JollyBot works by always attempting to cooperate with the opposing agent, attempting to establish mutual cooperation between the agents whenever reasonable. Even in the case of a more aggressive agent, JollyBot tries to remain jolly. The bot was developed as part of an assignment in an Artificial Intelligence course, with the goal of ultimately participating in a tournament against other submitted agents. JollyBot faced off against the other agents, emerging victorious by being a really swell fella.

Acknowledgements

The project icon is retrieved from the Noun Project. The original source material has been altered for the purposes of the project. The icon is used under the terms of the Public Domain.

The project icon is by Matt Brooks from the Noun Project.