Human-Agent Decision-making: Combining Theory and Practice

TL;DR

This paper explores how game theory and logic can inform the design of automated agents that interact effectively with humans in negotiation, bargaining, and persuasion scenarios, considering human social and psychological factors.

Contribution

It investigates the applicability of strategic behavior theories to real-world human-agent interactions across multiple negotiation contexts.

Findings

Equilibrium-based agents can effectively interact with humans in bargaining and negotiation.

Logic-based argumentation provides a formal framework for argumentation in human-agent interaction.

Using strategic theories enhances agent performance in security and persuasion games.

Abstract

Extensive work has been conducted both in game theory and logic to model strategic interaction. An important question is whether we can use these theories to design agents for interacting with people? On the one hand, they provide a formal design specification for agent strategies. On the other hand, people do not necessarily adhere to playing in accordance with these strategies, and their behavior is affected by a multitude of social and psychological factors. In this paper we will consider the question of whether strategies implied by theories of strategic behavior can be used by automated agents that interact proficiently with people. We will focus on automated agents that we built that need to interact with people in two negotiation settings: bargaining and deliberation. For bargaining we will study game-theory based equilibrium agents and for argumentation we will discuss logic-based argumentation theory. We will also consider security games and persuasion games and will discuss the benefits of using equilibrium based agents.