A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Off-Switch Game

TL;DR

This paper provides a fully game-theoretic analysis of the off-switch game, modeling the human as a rational player with a random utility function, enabling more accurate calculation of the robot's optimal actions.

Contribution

It advances the off-switch game analysis by incorporating rational human behavior and arbitrary beliefs, improving upon previous models that assumed irrationality and simplified assumptions.

Findings

Allows calculation of robot's best action under rational human model

Handles arbitrary belief and irrationality assumptions

Enhances understanding of human-robot interaction dynamics

Abstract

The off-switch game is a game theoretic model of a highly intelligent robot interacting with a human. In the original paper by Hadfield-Menell et al. (2016), the analysis is not fully game-theoretic as the human is modelled as an irrational player, and the robot's best action is only calculated under unrealistic normality and soft-max assumptions. In this paper, we make the analysis fully game theoretic, by modelling the human as a rational player with a random utility function. As a consequence, we are able to easily calculate the robot's best action for arbitrary belief and irrationality assumptions.