Forcing an AI system to “play nice” does not automatically make people cooperate. In one set of simulations, it barely moved the needle. In another, it backfired. That’s the core tension in a new study from Michigan State University that uses a classic cooperation test, the Public Goods game, to ask a modern question: what happens when artificial intelligence joins the group? The work was led by MSU professor Christoph Adami, Department of Microbiology, Genetics, & Immunology. “Cooperation is everywhere in nature,” Adami said. “But the mathematics of how cooperation can persist is not easy to understand.” When being good gets punished The study sits inside a long-running problem that economists and ecologists love to argue about. It is often called the “tragedy of the commons,” a situation where shared resources get drained because each individual can gain by taking more than they give. MSU professor Christoph Adami, Department of Microbiology, Genetics, & Immunology. (CREDIT: Michigan State University) “Being a good citizen is more costly than being a leech,” Adami said. He added that his …