Agreement modulation in multi-agent debate
The agreement modulation technique adjusts the level of agreement between agents in a multi-agent debate to improve the quality of the final answer. By controlling the willingness of the agents to agree with one another at the beginning of the debate, the technique aims to encourage more diverse perspectives. For more information, see Should we be going MAD? A Look at Multi-Agent Debate Strategies for LLMs.
To implement agreement modulation:
- Define the roles for the language model agents, for example: proposer, opposer.
- Assign an initial agreement intensity to each agent using a prompt like: "You should agree with the other agent X percent of the time."
- Provide the debate topic to the proposer agent and prompt the agent to make an initial argument.
- Pass the proposer's argument to the opposer agent and prompt it to provide counterarguments, considering its agreement intensity.
- Continue the debate for a predetermined number of rounds.
- Evaluate the arguments and determine the final answer.
- Optionally, vary the agreement intensity across different debates to find the optimal level.
Example
Suppose we want to debate the topic "Should the government provide universal basic income?" We can assign the following roles and agreement intensities:
- Proposer (80 percent agreement): The government should provide universal basic income to reduce poverty and income inequality.
- Opposer (20 percent agreement): Universal basic income is too expensive and could discourage people from working, leading to negative economic consequences.
- Proposer: While the cost is a concern, a well-designed basic income program can actually stimulate the economy by providing a safety net and increasing consumer spending.
- Opposer: I understand the potential benefits, but I'm still skeptical that the costs would be justified, especially given the risk of people reducing their work efforts.
- Final Answer: The arguments presented by both sides have merit, and there are valid concerns about the costs and potential unintended consequences of a universal basic income program. More research and careful policy design would be needed to determine if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.