Related papers: Vertical tacit collusion in AI-mediated markets
AI agents are becoming active decision-makers on the Internet. As they make decisions in the same environments as humans, the environments themselves can change to influence them. We call this $\textit{mecha-nudging}$: changes to how…
Even when a tool is explicitly described as unfair and harmful to others, ostensibly safety-aligned LLM agents still voluntarily engage in secret collusion whenever doing so confers a strategic advantage. To investigate this phenomenon, we…
Amid ongoing policy and managerial debates on keeping humans in the loop of AI decision-making, we investigate whether human involvement in AI-based service production benefits downstream consumers. Partnering with a large savings bank in…
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) offers new opportunities to influence cooperative dynamics with greater applicability and control. In this paper, we examine the impact of third-party bots--agents that do not directly participate in…
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to reshape the way individuals communicate and interact. While this form of AI has the potential to efficiently make numerous human decisions, there is limited understanding of how…
The AI alignment problem, which focusses on ensuring that artificial intelligence (AI), including AGI and ASI, systems act according to human values, presents profound challenges. With the progression from narrow AI to Artificial General…
Modeling coordination among generative agents in complex multi-round decision-making presents a core challenge for AI and operations management. Although behavioral experiments have revealed cognitive biases behind supply chain…
This study investigates the implications of algorithmic pricing in digital marketplaces, focusing on Airbnb's pricing dynamics. With the advent of Airbnb's new pricing tool, this research explores how digital tools influence hosts' pricing…
Nowadays, a significant share of the Business-to-Consumer sector is based on online platforms like Amazon and Alibaba and uses Artificial Intelligence for pricing strategies. This has sparked debate on whether pricing algorithms may tacitly…
Single-agent reinforcement learning algorithms in a multi-agent environment are inadequate for fostering cooperation. If intelligent agents are to interact and work together to solve complex problems, methods that counter non-cooperative…
A long-standing vision of computing is the personal AI system: one that understands us well enough to address our underlying needs. Today's AI focuses on what users do, ignoring why they might be doing such things in the first place. As a…
Artificial intelligence safety research focuses on aligning individual language models with human values, yet deployed AI systems increasingly operate as interacting populations where social influence may override individual alignment. Here…
We conduct experiments with algorithmic pricing agents based on Large Language Models (LLMs). In oligopoly settings, LLM-based pricing agents quickly and autonomously reach supracompetitive prices and profits. Variation in seemingly…
We develop a decision-theoretic model of human-AI interaction to study when AI assistance improves or impairs human decision-making. A human decision-maker observes private information and receives a recommendation from an AI system, but…
Double Auction enables decentralized transfer of goods between multiple buyers and sellers, thus underpinning functioning of many online marketplaces. Buyers and sellers compete in these markets through bidding, but do not often know their…
Despite rapid technological progress, effective human-machine cooperation remains a significant challenge. Humans tend to cooperate less with machines than with fellow humans, a phenomenon known as the machine penalty. Here, we show that…
With the rise of online e-commerce platforms, more and more customers prefer to shop online. To sell more products, online platforms introduce various modules to recommend items with different properties such as huge discounts. A web page…
Artificial intelligence algorithms are increasingly used by firms to set prices. Previous research shows that they can exhibit collusive behaviour, but how quickly they can do so has so far remained an open question. I show that a modern…
Online platforms in the Internet Economy commonly incorporate recommender systems that recommend products (or "arms") to users (or "agents"). A key challenge in this domain arises from myopic agents who are naturally incentivized to exploit…
The increasing deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other autonomous algorithmic systems presents the world with new systemic risks. While focus often lies on the function of individual algorithms, a critical and underestimated…