  Cooperation is a phenomenon that has been widely studied across many
different disciplines. In the field of computer science, the modularity and
robustness of multi-agent systems offer significant practical advantages over
individual machines. At the same time, agents using standard reinforcement
learning algorithms often fail to achieve long-term, cooperative strategies in
unstable environments when there are short-term incentives to defect. Political
philosophy, on the other hand, studies the evolution of cooperation in humans
who face similar incentives to act individualistically, but nevertheless
succeed in forming societies. Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan provides the classic
analysis of the transition from a pre-social State of Nature, where consistent
defection results in a constant state of war, to stable political community
through the institution of an absolute Sovereign. This thesis argues that
Hobbes's natural and moral philosophy are strikingly applicable to artificially
intelligent agents and aims to show that his political solutions are
experimentally successful in producing cooperation among modified Q-Learning
agents. Cooperative play is achieved in a novel Sequential Social Dilemma
called the Civilization Game, which models the State of Nature by introducing
the Hobbesian mechanisms of opponent learning awareness and majoritarian
voting, leading to the establishment of a Sovereign.
