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Large Language Models Empowered Agent-based Modeling and Simulation: A Survey and Perspectives (2312.11970v1)

Published 19 Dec 2023 in cs.AI, cs.CL, cs.CY, and cs.MA

Abstract: Agent-based modeling and simulation has evolved as a powerful tool for modeling complex systems, offering insights into emergent behaviors and interactions among diverse agents. Integrating LLMs into agent-based modeling and simulation presents a promising avenue for enhancing simulation capabilities. This paper surveys the landscape of utilizing LLMs in agent-based modeling and simulation, examining their challenges and promising future directions. In this survey, since this is an interdisciplinary field, we first introduce the background of agent-based modeling and simulation and LLM-empowered agents. We then discuss the motivation for applying LLMs to agent-based simulation and systematically analyze the challenges in environment perception, human alignment, action generation, and evaluation. Most importantly, we provide a comprehensive overview of the recent works of LLM-empowered agent-based modeling and simulation in multiple scenarios, which can be divided into four domains: cyber, physical, social, and hybrid, covering simulation of both real-world and virtual environments. Finally, since this area is new and quickly evolving, we discuss the open problems and promising future directions.

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Summary

  • The paper introduces the integration of large language models with agent-based simulation to enhance decision-making, communication, and adaptation.
  • It outlines novel methodologies for realistic simulations across cyber, physical, social, and hybrid domains, emphasizing adaptive learning and heterogeneous agent behavior.
  • The survey highlights challenges such as scaling efficiency, environment construction, and ethical alignment while mapping out future research directions.

LLMs Empowered Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation: A Survey and Perspectives

Introduction

The integration of LLMs marks a significant development in the landscape of agent-based modeling and simulation. LLMs represent a recent evolution in the field of machine learning, extending capabilities in NLP and textual generation. LLMs showcase the potential to enhance the fidelity and complexity of simulations by enabling nuanced agent decision-making, communication, and adaptation. This integration promises deeper insights into system behaviors and emergent phenomena across four primary domains: cyber, physical, social, and hybrid.

Background and Objectives

Agent-based modeling and simulation is a robust approach to replicating complex systems via the simulation of individual agents and their interactions within a given environment. The capacity to incorporate LLMs into these simulations offers unprecedented potential for enriched understanding and prognostication of complex phenomena by enabling agents to exhibit human-like autonomy, social ability, reactivity, and pro-activeness.

The aim is to overcome the limitations of traditional architectures that rely on either simplified reactive systems or complex symbolic representations often deemed impractical. The LLM-enhanced agents offer a comprehensive view of agent interactions with a heightened focus on real-world complexities, making them particularly valuable in diverse application areas such as urban planning, public health, and socio-economic analysis.

Critical Abilities of LLMs for Modeling and Simulation

Perception

LLM-based agents can accurately sense and interpret a wide range of environmental data, allowing them to interact with their surroundings and other agents effectively. This capacity is critical for simulating human-like behavior where agents must perceive and react to dynamic changes in their environment. Figure 1

Figure 1: Illustration of how LLM agents meet the requirements of agent-based modeling and simulation.

Reasoning and Decision Making

Equipped with the ability to make informed decisions, LLMs operate with both immediate situational awareness and long-term strategic foresight, thus aligning more closely with human cognitive processes. This grants the potential for more realistic simulations of economic markets, social dynamics, and response strategies in critical situations.

Adaptive Learning and Evolution

LLM agents exemplify adaptive learning capacities, enabling them to evolve through dynamic simulations, akin to human learning. This feature is crucial for long-term simulations where conditions change substantially over time, requiring agents to modify behaviors and decision-making strategies.

Heterogeneity and Personalizing

LLM agents support the creation of heterogeneous population dynamics by emulating diverse human characteristics, preferences, and behaviors, leading to more personalized simulations of complex social and economic systems.

Challenges and Approaches

Environment Construction and Interface

A key challenge lies in creating environments that LLM agents can interact with intuitively. This involves constructing realistic, rule-based, and dynamic simulation environments, whether virtual or based on real-world data.

Human Alignment and Personalization

Ensuring that simulations align with human values and preferences necessitates advanced prompt engineering and model fine-tuning. Agents should reflect human-like biases and corrections to represent diverse perspectives accurately.

Simulation of Actions

LLMs must employ advanced memory and reflection capabilities to accurately simulate human decision-making processes. This includes devising comprehensive plans and refining them through feedback-driven cycles to enhance simulation believability.

Evaluation of LLM Agents

Evaluation metrics must incorporate realness validation against human data, ethical risk assessments, and explainability to ensure that simulated actions mirror genuine human behavior patterns and societal laws.

Recent Advances in LLM Agent-Based Modeling

The survey categorizes recent advances into diverse application scenarios across cyber, physical, social, and hybrid domains, each manifesting significant innovations and expanding the potential impact of LLMs on simulations. Figure 2

Figure 2: Illustration of LLM agent-based modeling and simulation in different domains.

Open Problems and Future Directions

Efficiency of Scaling Up

The computational cost of simulating large-scale, heterogeneous agent societies remains high. Future research must explore strategies to improve simulation efficiency and scalability, including advanced optimization techniques and robust model compression methods.

Benchmark and Open Platform Development

To drive innovation, it's vital to develop comprehensive benchmarks that assess LLM agent simulation capabilities and to establish open platforms for community-driven exploration, development, and enhancement.

Robustness and Ethical Considerations

Enhancing the robustness of LLM agents against adversarial attacks and ensuring their ethical alignment with societal norms and expectations remains an area in need of significant advancement.

Conclusion

LLM-empowered agent-based modeling and simulation represents a rapidly advancing frontier in computational modeling, AI, and complex system analysis. This survey underscores the potential for profound impacts across varied domains and illuminates several pivotal future research directions to enhance and refine the integration of LLMs into agent-based simulations.

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