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Is Knowledge Power? On the (Im)possibility of Learning from Strategic Interactions

Neural Information Processing Systems

When learning in strategic environments, a key question is whether agents can overcome uncertainty about their preferences to achieve outcomes they could have achieved absent any uncertainty. Can they do this solely through interactions with each other? We focus this question on the ability of agents to attain the value of their Stackelberg optimal strategy and study the impact of information asymmetry. We study repeated interactions in fully strategic environments where players' actions are decided based on learning algorithms that take into account their observed histories and knowledge of the game. We study the pure Nash equilibria (PNE) of a meta-game where players choose these algorithms as their actions.







Game-Theoretic Understandings of Multi-Agent Systems with Multiple Objectives

Wang, Yue

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In practical multi-agent systems, agents often have diverse objectives, which makes the system more complex, as each agent's performance across multiple criteria depends on the joint actions of all agents, creating intricate strategic trade-offs. To address this, we introduce the Multi-Objective Markov Game (MOMG), a framework for multi-agent reinforcement learning with multiple objectives. We propose the Pareto-Nash Equilibrium (PNE) as the primary solution concept, where no agent can unilaterally improve one objective without sacrificing performance on another. We prove existence of PNE, and establish an equivalence between the PNE and the set of Nash Equilibria of MOMG's corresponding linearly scalarized games, enabling solutions of MOMG by transferring to a standard single-objective Markov game. However, we note that computing a PNE is theoretically and computationally challenging, thus we propose and study weaker but more tractable solution concepts. Building on these foundations, we develop online learning algorithm that identify a single solution to MOMGs. Furthermore, we propose a two-phase, preference-free algorithm that decouples exploration from planning. Our algorithm enables computation of a PNE for any given preference profile without collecting new samples, providing an efficient methodological characterization of the entire Pareto-Nash front.


Is Knowledge Power? On the (Im)possibility of Learning from Strategic Interactions

Neural Information Processing Systems

When learning in strategic environments, a key question is whether agents can overcome uncertainty about their preferences to achieve outcomes they could have achieved absent any uncertainty. Can they do this solely through interactions with each other? We focus this question on the ability of agents to attain the value of their Stackelberg optimal strategy and study the impact of information asymmetry. We study repeated interactions in fully strategic environments where players' actions are decided based on learning algorithms that take into account their observed histories and knowledge of the game. We study the pure Nash equilibria (PNE) of a meta-game where players choose these algorithms as their actions.


Is Knowledge Power? On the (Im)possibility of Learning from Strategic Interaction

Ananthakrishnan, Nivasini, Haghtalab, Nika, Podimata, Chara, Yang, Kunhe

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

When learning in strategic environments, a key question is whether agents can overcome uncertainty about their preferences to achieve outcomes they could have achieved absent any uncertainty. Can they do this solely through interactions with each other? We focus this question on the ability of agents to attain the value of their Stackelberg optimal strategy and study the impact of information asymmetry. We study repeated interactions in fully strategic environments where players' actions are decided based on learning algorithms that take into account their observed histories and knowledge of the game. We study the pure Nash equilibria (PNE) of a meta-game where players choose these algorithms as their actions. We demonstrate that if one player has perfect knowledge about the game, then any initial informational gap persists. That is, while there is always a PNE in which the informed agent achieves her Stackelberg value, there is a game where no PNE of the meta-game allows the partially informed player to achieve her Stackelberg value. On the other hand, if both players start with some uncertainty about the game, the quality of information alone does not determine which agent can achieve her Stackelberg value. In this case, the concept of information asymmetry becomes nuanced and depends on the game's structure. Overall, our findings suggest that repeated strategic interactions alone cannot facilitate learning effectively enough to earn an uninformed player her Stackelberg value.