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AI Alignment is often presented as an interaction between a single designer and an artificial agent in which the designer attempts to ensure the agent's behavior is consistent with its purpose, and risks arise solely because of conflicts…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-09-14 Steve Phelps , Rebecca Ranson

We study the problem of how to coordinate the actions of independent agents in a distributed system where message arrival times are unbounded, but are determined by an exponential probability distribution. Asynchronous protocols executed in…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-11-10 Ariel Livshits , Yoram Moses

This paper studies contracting in the presence of externalities with a non-contractible outsider. Multiple equilibria arise from strategic symmetry between the insider agent and the outsider. To address strategic uncertainty, the principal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-09 Hongcheng Li

The problem of reinforcement learning is considered where the environment or the model undergoes a change. An algorithm is proposed that an agent can apply in such a problem to achieve the optimal long-time discounted reward. The algorithm…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-04-25 Wuxia Chen , Taposh Banerjee , Jemin George , Carl Busart

We consider a moral hazard problem with multiple principals in a continuous-time model. The agent can only work exclusively for one principal at a given time, so faces an optimal switching problem. Using a randomized formulation, we manage…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-09-14 Kaitong Hu , Zhenjie Ren , Junjian Yang

We study an agency problem between a leader (the principal) seeking to design an optimal incentive scheme to a follower (the agent) to increase the value of a risky project subjected to accidents and volatility uncertainty. The agency…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Thibaut Mastrolia , Haoze Yan

Dynamic Stackelberg games are a broad class of two-player games in which the leader acts first, and the follower chooses a response strategy to the leader's strategy. Unfortunately, only stylized Stackelberg games are explicitly solvable…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-15 Guillermo Alvarez , Ibrahim Ekren , Anastasis Kratsios , Xuwei Yang

We consider an outsourcing problem where a software agent procures multiple services from providers with uncertain reliabilities to complete a computational task before a strict deadline. The service consumer requires a procurement strategy…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Farzaneh Farhadi , Maria Chli , Nicholas R. Jennings

In this paper, we initiate the computational problem of jointly designing information and contracts. We consider three possible classes of contracts with decreasing flexibility and increasing simplicity: ambiguous contracts, menus of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-07-09 Matteo Castiglioni , Junjie Chen

Reinforcement learning algorithms describe how an agent can learn an optimal action policy in a sequential decision process, through repeated experience. In a given environment, the agent policy provides him some running and terminal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-03-24 Arthur Charpentier , Romuald Elie , Carl Remlinger

A key challenge in multi-robot and multi-agent systems is generating solutions that are robust to other self-interested or even adversarial parties who actively try to prevent the agents from achieving their goals. The practicality of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-10-19 Trong Nghia Hoang , Yuchen Xiao , Kavinayan Sivakumar , Christopher Amato , Jonathan How

Here, we develop a deep learning algorithm for solving Principal-Agent (PA) mean field games with market-clearing conditions -- a class of problems that have thus far not been studied and one that poses difficulties for standard numerical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-05 Steven Campbell , Yichao Chen , Arvind Shrivats , Sebastian Jaimungal

A principal selects a team of agents for collaborating on a joint project. The principal aims to design a revenue-optimal contract that incentivize the team of agents to exert costly effort while satisfying fairness constraints. We show…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Matteo Castiglioni , Junjie Chen , Yingkai Li

Firms increasingly delegate decisions to learning algorithms in platform markets. Standard algorithms perform well when platform policies are stationary, but firms often face ambiguity about whether policies are stationary or adapt…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-02-11 Kyohei Okumura

Multiagent systems can use commitments as the core of a general coordination infrastructure, supporting both cooperative and non-cooperative interactions. Agents whose objectives are aligned, and where one agent can help another achieve…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-12-15 Qi Zhang , Edmund H. Durfee , Satinder Singh

Machine learning has become increasingly popular in informing data-driven policy-making. Policies influence behavior in individuals or populations, and ideally, through observational signals, policy-makers learn which policies are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Shiliang Zuo

In this work, a novel Stackelberg game theoretic framework is proposed for trading energy bidirectionally between the demand-response (DR) aggregator and the prosumers. This formulation allows for flexible energy arbitrage and additional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-28 Styliani I. Kampezidou , Justin Romberg , Kyriakos G. Vamvoudakis , Dimitri N. Mavris

In a situation of moral hazard, this paper investigates the problem of Principal with $n$ Agents when the number of Agents $n$ goes to infinity. There is competition between the Agents expressed by the fact that they optimize their utility…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-06 Mao Fabrice Djete

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

We study the problem of designing an optimal sequence of incentives that a principal should offer to an agent so that the agent's optimal behavior under the incentives realizes the principal's objective expressed as a temporal logic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-20 Yagiz Savas , Vijay Gupta , Melkior Ornik , Lillian J. Ratliff , Ufuk Topcu