Memory Is Communication: The Frontier Between Remembering and Signaling

Abstract:A bounded agent may obtain information for a decision from its own past, from peers, or from both sources. Retaining task-relevant history can reduce later communication, while a peer message can supply what memory lacks. Under limits on both resources, how should an agent allocate its information budget? Given a fixed task and decision rule, the memory and message rate pairs attaining a performance threshold form an achievable region under specified rules for using history and peer observations. We call its efficient boundary the remembering--signaling frontier. Across conditions where history permits the same maximum reduction in task loss, we hypothesize that a bounded agent will need less peer communication when it obtains a larger loss reduction from history. In preliminary referential games, target repetition coincided with shorter successful messages, while predictability from a hidden cyclic rule did not shorten them. Experiments varying memory and message rates can estimate the frontier and test this prediction across cooperative tasks.

Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL); Information Theory (cs.IT); Multiagent Systems (cs.MA)

arXiv:2608.17053 [cs.AI]

(or arXiv:2608.17053v1 [cs.AI] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.17053 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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