The Sustainability Game: AI Technology as an Intervention for Public Understanding of Cooperative Investment

Cooperative behaviour is a fundamental strategy for survival; it positively affects economies, social relationships, and makes larger societal structures possible. People vary, however, in their willingness to engage in cooperative behaviour in a particular context. Here we examine whether AI can be effectively used to to alter individuals' implicit understanding of cooperative dynamics, and hence increase cooperation and participation in public goods projects. We developed an intervention-the Sustainability Game (SG)-to allow players to experience the consequences of individual investment strategies on a sustainable society. Results show that the intervention significantly increases individuals' cooperative behaviour in partially anonymised public goods contexts, but enhances competition one-on-one. This indicates our intervention does improve transparency of the systemic consequences of individual cooperative behaviour.