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Constraint Programming (CP) has been successfully used to model and solve complex combinatorial problems. However, modeling is often not trivial and requires expertise, which is a bottleneck to wider adoption. In Constraint Acquisition…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Dimos Tsouros , Senne Berden , Tias Guns

We study a screening problem in which an agent privately observes a set of feasible technologies and can strategically disclose only a subset to the principal. The principal then takes an action whose payoff consequences for both players…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-23 Tan Gan , Yingkai Li

The increasing deployment of AI is shaping the future landscape of the internet, which is set to become an integrated ecosystem of AI agents. Orchestrating the interaction among AI agents necessitates decentralized, self-sustaining…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Dima Ivanov , Paul Dütting , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Tonghan Wang , David C. Parkes

A principal who values an object allocates it to one or more agents. Agents learn private information (signals) from an information designer about the allocation payoff to the principal. Monetary transfer is not available but the principal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-10-31 Yi-Chun Chen , Gaoji Hu , Xiangqian Yang

This work considers a repeated principal-agent bandit game, where the principal can only interact with her environment through the agent. The principal and the agent have misaligned objectives and the choice of action is only left to the…

We suggest that the analysis of incomplete contracting developed by law and economics researchers can provide a useful framework for understanding the AI alignment problem and help to generate a systematic approach to finding solutions. We…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-04-13 Dylan Hadfield-Menell , Gillian Hadfield

We study hidden-action principal-agent problems with multiple agents. Unlike previous work, we consider a general setting in which each agent has an arbitrary number of actions, and the joint action induces outcomes according to an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Federico Cacciamani , Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Nicola Gatti

In its simplest form the well known consensus problem for a networked family of autonomous agents is to devise a set of protocols or update rules, one for each agent, which can enable all of the agents to adjust or tune their "agreement…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-16 Jingxuan Zhu , Yixuan Lin , Ji Liu , A. Stephen Morse

We address the problem of learning to assign prediction tasks to one agent from a set of available human or AI agents. In particular, we focus on the sequential learning of agent expertise and assignment policies where each agent is…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Shang Wu , Saatvik Kher , Padhraic Smyth

We study principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme (a.k.a. contract) so as to induce an agent to take a costly, unobservable action. We relax the assumption that the principal perfectly…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-06-02 Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

This paper considers a distributed multi-agent optimization problem, with the global objective consisting of the sum of local objective functions of the agents. The agents solve the optimization problem using local computation and…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2017-11-07 Shripad Gade , Nitin H. Vaidya

We study the algorithmic problem faced by an information holder (seller) who wants to optimally sell such information to a budged-constrained decision maker (buyer) that has to undertake some action. Differently from previous, we consider…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-02-01 Matteo Castiglioni , Francesco Bacchiocchi , Alberto Marchesi , Giulia Romano , Nicola Gatti

We study the consequences of information asymmetries and misaligned incentives in settings with multiple independent agents. We model an interaction between a Sender, who holds vital private information but cannot act, and a Receiver, who…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Nanda Kishore Sreenivas , Kate Larson

We study the fundamental problem of designing contracts in principal-agent problems under uncertainty. Previous works mostly addressed Bayesian settings in which principal's uncertainty is modeled as a probability distribution over agent's…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi

We study a setting in which a principal selects an agent to execute a collection of tasks according to a specified priority sequence. Agents, however, have their own individual priority sequences according to which they wish to execute the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Donya G. Dobakhshari , Lav R. Varshney , Vijay Gupta

Consider a multi-agent systems setup in which a principal (a supervisor agent) assigns subtasks to specialized agents and aggregates their responses into a single system-level output. A core property of such systems is information…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Paulius Rauba , Simonas Cepenas , Mihaela van der Schaar

We consider a general formulation of the Principal-Agent problem with a lump-sum payment on a finite horizon, providing a systematic method for solving such problems. Our approach is the following: we first find the contract that is optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-01-10 Jakša Cvitanić , Dylan Possamaï , Nizar Touzi

Distributed estimation that recruits potentially large groups of humans to collect data about a phenomenon of interest has emerged as a paradigm applicable to a broad range of detection and estimation tasks. However, it also presents a…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-01-28 Kewei Chen , Donya Ghavidel , Vijay Gupta , Yih-Fang Huang

Trajectory optimization of sensing robots to actively gather information of targets has received much attention in the past. It is well-known that under the assumption of linear Gaussian target dynamics and sensor models the stochastic…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-09-21 Jennifer Wakulicz , He Kong , Salah Sukkarieh

A principal delegates decisions to a biased agent. Payoffs depend on a state that the principal cannot observe. Initially, the agent does not observe the state, but he can acquire information about it at a cost. We characterize the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-11-21 Ian Ball , Xin Gao