cs.GT cs.GT

A hundred agents, two thousand tasks, less than a hundred iterations, and the market for unloved chores settled into equilibrium all on its own. No one was directing things from the center; each participant only responded to the nearest signal. That’s how multiplicative tatonnement works — a mechanism like the synchronized dance of a flock without a leader.

A cloud service dishes out commands to a drone swarm without any knowledge of their movements. The signals are encrypted, but each maneuver leaves a barely visible trace in the cipher, like ink bleeding through paper from the pressure of a pen. Over time, these ink stains coalesce into a pattern, and the hidden data is no longer a secret.