Collective intelligence for control of distributed dynamical systems

Abstract

We consider the El Farol bar problem, also known as the minority game (W. B.\nArthur, ``The American Economic Review'', 84(2): 406--411 (1994), D. Challet\nand Y.C. Zhang, ``Physica A'', 256:514 (1998)). We view it as an instance of\nthe general problem of how to configure the nodal elements of a distributed\ndynamical system so that they do not ``work at cross purposes'', in that their\ncollective dynamics avoids frustration and thereby achieves a provided global\ngoal. We summarize a mathematical theory for such configuration applicable when\n(as in the bar problem) the global goal can be expressed as minimizing a global\nenergy function and the nodes can be expressed as minimizers of local free\nenergy functions. We show that a system designed with that theory performs\nnearly optimally for the bar problem.\n