Socio-technical systems increasingly involve the convergence of human intelligence (natural life, or NLife) with artificial intelligence (ALife) in co-existence, co-production and co-evolution. This raises the possibility of an inequitable distribution of power , either by exacerbating existing asymmetric power relationships or an unwitting concession of power from NLife to ALife. In this paper, we investigate power-sensitive design, an instance of value-sensitive design, as a conceptual model for empowering NLife communities with ALife capabilities. We define “empowerment” in five cognitive dimensions, relate this definition to four higher-order cybernetic design patterns, and apply these patterns to four case studies. We conclude with a discussion of the social implications, in particular the empowerment of communities through the embodiment of communality .

In a high-stakes cooperative survival game, self-interested behaviours reward the individual in the short-term but may have a detrimental impact on the collective in the long-term. Such situations can be solved by introducing social contracts between players that reduce the set of possible actions. In the absence of an empowered authority capable of enforcement, however, a player will only uphold such a contract so long as they believe that the other players will do the same. We term this buy-in. In this context, we envision a cooperative survival game that extends the scope of the ‘conventional’ Mexican standoff (a three-player Hawk-Dove game) to n -players, from which we design and implement a self-organising multiagent system. We devise a set of experiments across varying degrees of initial buy-in and examine its impact on social contracts and the voluntary restriction of self-interest. In particular, we show that there is a cyclical, non-transitive dependency between the three that is both ring-reinforcing and critical for systemic stability.

Hierarchy is an efficient way for a group to organize, but often goes along with inequality that benefits leaders. To control despotic behaviour, followers can assess leaders’ decisions by aggregating their own and their neighbours’ experience, and in response challenge despotic leaders. But in hierarchical social networks, this interactional justice can be limited by (i) the high influence of a small clique who are treated better, and (ii) the low connectedness of followers. Here we study how the connectedness of a social network affects the co-evolution of despotism in leaders and tolerance to despotism in followers. We simulate the evolution of a population of agents, where the influence of an agent is its number of social links. Whether a leader remains in power is controlled by the overall satisfaction of group members, as determined by their joint assessment of the leaders behaviour. We demonstrate that centralization of a social network around a highly influential clique greatly increases the level of despotism. This is because the clique is more satisfied, and their higher influence spreads their positive opinion of the leader throughout the network. Finally, our results suggest that increasing the connectedness of followers limits despotism while maintaining hierarchy.