Rationality authority for provable rational behavior

Shlomi Dolev, Panagiota N. Panagopoulou, Mikaël Rabie, Elad M. Schiller, Paul G. Spirakis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Players in a game are assumed to be totally rational and absolutely smart. However, in reality all players may act in non-rational ways and may fail to understand and find their best actions. In particular, participants in social interactions, such as lotteries and auctions, cannot be expected to always find by themselves the “best-reply” to any situation. Indeed, agents may consult with others about the possible outcome of their actions. It is then up to the counselee to assure the rationality of the consultant’s advice. We present a distributed computer system infrastructure, named rationality authority, that allows safe consultation among (possibly biased) parties. The parties’ advices are adapted only after verifying their feasibility and optimality by standard formal proof checkers. The rationality authority design considers computational constraints, as well as privacy and security issues, such as verification methods that do not reveal private preferences. Some of the techniques resembles zero-knowledge proofs. A non-cooperative game is presented by the game inventor along with its (possibly intractable) equilibrium. The game inventor advises playing by this equilibrium and offers a checkable proof for the equilibrium feasibility and optimality. Standard verification procedures, provided by trusted (according to their reputation) verification procedures, are used to verify the proof. Thus, the proposed rationality authority infrastructure facilitates the applications of game theory in several important real-life scenarios by the use of computing systems.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAlgorithms, Probability, Networks, and Games - Scientific Papers and Essays Dedicated to Paul G. Spirakis on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday
EditorsChristos Zaroliagis, Spyros Kontogiannis, Grammati Pantziou
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages33-48
Number of pages16
ISBN (Print)9783319240237
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2015
EventEuropean Symposium on Algorithms, ESA 2015 - Patras, Greece
Duration: 16 Sep 201516 Sep 2015

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9295
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

ConferenceEuropean Symposium on Algorithms, ESA 2015
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityPatras
Period16/09/1516/09/15

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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