Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • COMMENT

Cooperative AI: machines must learn to find common ground

To help humanity solve fundamental problems of cooperation, scientists need to reconceive artificial intelligence as deeply social.
  1. Allan Dafoe

    1. Allan Dafoe is associate professor and director at the Centre for the Governance of AI, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, UK.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Yoram Bachrach

    1. Yoram Bachrach is a research scientist at DeepMind, London.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  3. Gillian Hadfield

    1. Gillian Hadfield is director at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, University of Toronto, Canada; and senior policy adviser at OpenAI, San Francisco, California, USA; and a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and at the Center for Human-Compatible AI at the University of California, Berkeley.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  4. Eric Horvitz

    1. Eric Horvitz is chief scientific officer at Microsoft, Redmond, Washington, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  5. Kate Larson

    1. Kate Larson is professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and a research scientist at DeepMind, Montreal, Canada.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  6. Thore Graepel

    1. Thore Graepel is research lead at DeepMind, London; and professor of computer science at University College London.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Artificial-intelligence assistants and recommendation algorithms interact with billions of people every day, influencing lives in myriad ways, yet they still have little understanding of humans. Self-driving vehicles controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) are gaining mastery of their interactions with the natural world, but they are still novices when it comes to coordinating with other cars and pedestrians or collaborating with their human operators.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 593, 33-36 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01170-0

References

  1. Campbell, M., Hoane Jr, A. J. & Hsu, F.-H. Artif. Intell. 134, 57–83 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Silver, D. et al. Nature 529, 484–489 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Moravčík, M. et al. Science 356, 508–513 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Bard, N. et al. Artif. Intell. 280, 103216 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Kitano, H. et al. AI Magazine 18, 73 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Villani, V., Pini, F., Leali, F. & Secchi, C. Mechatronics 55, 248–266 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Russell, S. Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control (Penguin, 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Adadi, A. & Berrada, M. IEEE Access 6, 52138–52160 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S. & Gentzkow, M. Am. Econ. Rev. 110, 629–676 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Barocas, S., Hardt, M. & Narayanan, A. Fairness and Machine Learning (Fairmlbook.org, 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Buolamwini, J. & Gebru, T. Proc. Mach. Learn. Res. 81, 77–91 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Axelrod, R. The Evolution of Cooperation (Basic, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Deng, J. et al. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. 2009, 248–255 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Dafoe, A. et al. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08630 (2020).

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links