{"pk":49886,"title":"The Odyssey of the Fittest: Can Agents Survive and Still Be Good?","subtitle":null,"abstract":"As AI models grow in power and generality, understanding how agents learn and make decisions in complex environments is critical to promoting ethical behavior. This study introduces the Odyssey, a lightweight, adaptive text-based adventure game, providing a scalable framework for exploring AI ethics and safety. The Odyssey examines the ethical implications of implementing biological drives—specifically, self-preservation—into three different agents: a Bayesian agent optimized with NEAT, a Bayesian agent optimized with stochastic variational inference, and a GPT-4o agent. The agents select actions at each scenario to survive, adapting to increasingly challenging scenarios. Post-simulation analysis evaluates the ethical scores of the agent's decisions, uncovering the trade-offs it navigates to survive. Specifically, analysis finds that when danger increases, agents ethical behavior becomes unpredictable. Surprisingly, the GPT-4o agent outperformed the Bayesian models in both survival and ethical consistency, challenging assumptions about traditional probabilistic methods and raising questions about the source of LLMs' probabilistic reasoning.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Biology; Philosophy; Emotion; Evolution; Bayesian modeling"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7s537158","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Dylan","middle_name":"T","last_name":"Waldner","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Texas at Austin","department":""},{"first_name":"Risto","middle_name":"","last_name":"Miikkulainen","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Texas","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T19:00:00+01:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49886/galley/37848/download/"}]}