# Learning Robust Real-Time Cultural Transmission without Human Data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.00715 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00715/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 70 of its 150 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Mar 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 70)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.01783/) (2016)
- [Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06907/) (2017)
- [Understanding intermediate layers using linear classifier probes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.01644/) (2016)
- [Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.05363/) (2017)
- [Exploration by Random Network Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.12894/) (2018)
- [Diversity is All You Need: Learning Skills without a Reward Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.06070/) (2018)
- [Solving Rubik's Cube with a Robot Hand](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07113/) (2019)
- [Sim-to-Real Transfer of Robotic Control with Dynamics Randomization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06537/) (2017)
- [Unifying Count-Based Exploration and Intrinsic Motivation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01868/) (2016)
- [Learning Quadrupedal Locomotion over Challenging Terrain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11251/) (2020)
- [RL2: Fast Reinforcement Learning via Slow Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.02779/) (2016)
- [Leveraging Procedural Generation to Benchmark Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01588/) (2019)
- [Reinforcement Learning with Unsupervised Auxiliary Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05397/) (2016)
- [Learning to reinforcement learn](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05763/) (2016)
- [On the Utility of Learning about Humans for Human-AI Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.05789/) (2019)
- [Maximum a Posteriori Policy Optimisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.06920/) (2018)
- [Emergent Tool Use From Multi-Agent Autocurricula](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.07528/) (2019)
- [Emergent Complexity and Zero-shot Transfer via Unsupervised Environment Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02096/) (2020)
- [Noisy Networks for Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.10295/) (2017)
- [Safe and Efficient Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.02647/) (2016)
- [Human-level performance in first-person multiplayer games with population-based deep reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01281/) (2018)
- [Unity: A General Platform for Intelligent Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02627/) (2018)
- [Machine Theory of Mind](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07740/) (2018)
- [Learning to Navigate in Complex Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.03673/) (2016)
- ["Other-Play" for Zero-Shot Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02979/) (2020)
- [The Hanabi Challenge: A New Frontier for AI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00506/) (2019)
- [The Next Decade in AI: Four Steps Towards Robust Artificial Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06177/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Human-Timescale Adaptation in an Open-Ended Task Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07608/) (2023)
- [Goal Misgeneralization: Why Correct Specifications Aren't Enough For Correct Goals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01790/) (2022)
- [Emergent Communication: Generalization and Overfitting in Lewis Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15342/) (2022)
- [The SocialAI School: Insights from Developmental Psychology Towards Artificial Socio-Cultural Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07871/) (2023)
- [Towards Large-Scale In-Context Reinforcement Learning by Meta-Training in Randomized Worlds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02869/) (2025)
- [Adaptive patch foraging in deep reinforcement learning agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08085/) (2022)
- [Developing, Evaluating and Scaling Learning Agents in Multi-Agent Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10958/) (2022)
- [Emergent Dominance Hierarchies in Reinforcement Learning Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12258/) (2024)
- [Social Interpretable Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15480/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cultural transmission is the domain-general social skill that allows agents to acquire and use information from each other in real-time with high fidelity and recall. In humans, it is the inheritance process that powers cumulative cultural evolution, expanding our skills, tools and knowledge across generations. We provide a method for generating zero-shot, high recall cultural transmission in artificially intelligent agents. Our agents succeed at real-time cultural transmission from humans in novel contexts without using any pre-collected human data. We identify a surprisingly simple set of ingredients sufficient for generating cultural transmission and develop an evaluation methodology for rigorously assessing it. This paves the way for cultural evolution as an algorithm for developing artificial general intelligence.