Agent-based Modeling: Understanding Our Creations

The defining feature of agent-based models is precisely that fundamental social structures emerge from the interaction of individual agents. The shorthand for this is that the collective structures grow “from the bottom up.” As a result of research pioneered at SFI, there now exists an impressive— and rapidly growing—population of agent-based models, of coral reefs, ant colonies, bird flocks, forest fires, political empires, ecosystems, technological evolutions, and traffic patterns. In the case of our own Sugarscape model, an “artificial society,” we have grown economies, epidemics, tribal formations, large-scale agent migrations, and other social phenomena characteristic of human societies.