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We investigate the mechanism design problem faced by a principal who hires \emph{multiple} agents to gather and report costly information. Then, the principal exploits the information to make an informed decision. We model this problem as a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-13 Federico Cacciamani , Matteo Castiglioni , Nicola Gatti

Contextual bandit learning is a reinforcement learning problem where the learner repeatedly receives a set of features (context), takes an action and receives a reward based on the action and context. We consider this problem under a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-03-05 Alekh Agarwal , Miroslav Dudík , Satyen Kale , John Langford , Robert E. Schapire

In the incentivized exploration model, a principal aims to explore and learn over time by interacting with a sequence of self-interested agents. It has been recently understood that the main challenge in designing incentive-compatible…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Benjamin Schiffer , Mark Sellke

We consider the classical multi-armed bandit problem, but with strategic arms. In this context, each arm is characterized by a bounded support reward distribution and strategically aims to maximize its own utility by potentially retaining a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-28 Ahmed Ben Yahmed , Clément Calauzènes , Vianney Perchet

Modern AI systems increasingly operate inside markets and institutions where data, behavior, and incentives are endogenous. This paper develops an economic foundation for multi-agent learning by studying a principal-agent interaction in a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-08 Nassim Helou

In this paper, we investigate a new multi-armed bandit (MAB) online learning model that considers real-world phenomena in many recommender systems: (i) the learning agent cannot pull the arms by itself and thus has to offer rewards to users…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Tianchen Zhou , Jia Liu , Chaosheng Dong , Jingyuan Deng

We consider the problem of incentivising desirable behaviours in multi-agent systems by way of taxation schemes. Our study employs the concurrent games model: in this model, each agent is primarily motivated to seek the satisfaction of a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-12 David Hyland , Julian Gutierrez , Michael Wooldridge

A latent bandit problem is one in which the learning agent knows the arm reward distributions conditioned on an unknown discrete latent state. The primary goal of the agent is to identify the latent state, after which it can act optimally.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Joey Hong , Branislav Kveton , Manzil Zaheer , Yinlam Chow , Amr Ahmed , Craig Boutilier

We consider the problem of contextual bandits and imitation learning, where the learner lacks direct knowledge of the executed action's reward. Instead, the learner can actively query an expert at each round to compare two actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-25 Ayush Sekhari , Karthik Sridharan , Wen Sun , Runzhe Wu

In principal-agent models, a principal offers a contract to an agent to perform a certain task. The agent exerts a level of effort that maximizes her utility. The principal is oblivious to the agent's chosen level of effort, and conditions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Alon Cohen , Moran Koren , Argyrios Deligkas

Critical sectors of human society are progressing toward the adoption of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) agents, which are trained individually on behalf of self-interested principals but deployed in a shared environment. Short of…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2021-12-22 Jiachen Yang , Ethan Wang , Rakshit Trivedi , Tuo Zhao , Hongyuan Zha

Algorithmic decision-making in high-stakes domains often involves assigning decisions to agents with incentives to strategically modify their input to the algorithm. In addition to dealing with incentives, in many domains of interest (e.g.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Keegan Harris , Chara Podimata , Zhiwei Steven Wu

Autonomous cyber-physical agents and systems play an increasingly large role in our lives. To ensure that agents behave in ways aligned with the values of the societies in which they operate, we must develop techniques that allow these…

We consider the contextual bandit problem on general action and context spaces, where the learner's rewards depend on their selected actions and an observable context. This generalizes the standard multi-armed bandit to the case where side…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-01-03 Moise Blanchard , Steve Hanneke , Patrick Jaillet

We study a stylized social learning dynamics where self-interested agents collectively follow a simple multi-armed bandit protocol. Each agent controls an ``episode": a short sequence of consecutive decisions. Motivating applications…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Kiarash Banihashem , Natalie Collina , Aleksandrs Slivkins

Assistance games (also known as cooperative inverse reinforcement learning games) have been proposed as a model for beneficial AI, wherein a robotic agent must act on behalf of a human principal but is initially uncertain about the humans…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-07-21 Arnaud Fickinger , Simon Zhuang , Dylan Hadfield-Menell , Stuart Russell

As an important psychological and social experiment, the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) treats the choice to cooperate or defect as an atomic action. We propose to study the behaviors of online learning algorithms in the Iterated…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-08-30 Baihan Lin , Djallel Bouneffouf , Guillermo Cecchi

We study a strategic version of the multi-armed bandit problem, where each arm is an individual strategic agent and we, the principal, pull one arm each round. When pulled, the arm receives some private reward $v_a$ and can choose an amount…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-07-03 Mark Braverman , Jieming Mao , Jon Schneider , S. Matthew Weinberg

Learning preferences implicit in the choices humans make is a well studied problem in both economics and computer science. However, most work makes the assumption that humans are acting (noisily) optimally with respect to their preferences.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-28 Lawrence Chan , Dylan Hadfield-Menell , Siddhartha Srinivasa , Anca Dragan

In bandit settings, optimizing long-term regret metrics requires exploration, which corresponds to sometimes taking myopically sub-optimal actions. When a long-lived principal merely recommends actions to be executed by a sequence of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-25 Ramya Ramalingam , Osbert Bastani , Aaron Roth