Incentive-Compatible Mechanisms for Norm Monitoring in Open Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

We consider the problem of detecting norm violations in open multi-agent systems (MAS). We show how, using ideas from scrip systems, we can design mechanisms where the agents comprising the MAS are incentivised to monitor the actions of other agents for norm violations. The cost of providing the incentives is not borne by the MAS and does not come from fines charged for norm violations (fines may be impossible to levy in a system where agents are free to leave and rejoin again under a different identity). Instead, monitoring incentives come from (scrip) fees for accessing the services provided by the MAS. In some cases, perfect monitoring (and hence enforcement) can be achieved: no norms will be violated in equilibrium. In other cases, we show that, while it is impossible to achieve perfect enforcement, we can get arbitrarily close; we can make the probability of a norm violation in equilibrium arbitrarily small. We show using simulations that our theoretical results hold for multi-agent systems with as few as 1000 agents-the system rapidly converges to the steady-state distribution of scrip tokens necessary to ensure monitoring and then remains close to the steady state.

Tackling Challenges of Robustness Measures for Agent Collaboration in Open Multi-Agent Systems

“…Responsibility assignment refers to the challenge of assigning responsibilities for norm monitoring to AAs in a coalition in a way that. Costs refers to covering the monetary efforts caused by monitoring AAs [55].…”

“…To ensure that monitoring costs are covered, an access fee for AAs that enter the coalition can be introduced. The access fee is used to compensate the costs of AAs for monitoring each other [55]. However, if not enough new AAs join the coalition, monitoring costs may not be covered in the long term.…”

“…By enforcing norms, AAs can be incentivized to obey the rules. In OMASs, however, AAs that violate rules are hard to punish because AAs can leave coalitions to prevent fines [55]. Too severe punishments can discourage AAs from participating in coalitions, especially when potential punishments exceed the benefits for AAs [16].…”

An Evaluation of Communication Protocol Languages for Engineering Multiagent Systems

“…In MAS research, social meaning is often modeled via commitments (Bentahar, Moulin, Meyer, & Chaib-draa, 2004;Dastani, van der Torre, & Yorke-Smith, 2017;Fornara & Colombetti, 2002;Meneguzzi, Magnaguagno, Singh, Telang, & Yorke-Smith, 2018 (Alechina, Halpern, Kash, & Logan, 2018;Artikis, Sergot, & Pitt, 2009;Padget, Vos, & Page, 2018). In the rest of the paper, for reasons of concreteness and familiarity, we use commitments as an exemplar way of modeling social meaning.…”

Monitoring norms: a multi-disciplinary perspective

“…One critical issue in the latter relates to possible conflicts between an agent's goals-the end goals it wishes to achieve-and its monitoring goal. Such conflicts can result in strategic monitoring, which is an issue that deserves attention (Alechina et al, 2016;Alechina et al, 2017).…”