Related papers: Reinforcement Learning Interventions on Boundedly Rational Human Agents in Frictionful Tasks

Reinforcement Learning Interventions on Boundedly Rational Human Agents in Frictionful Tasks

URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2401.14923v1
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2024 14:59:48 GMT
Title: Reinforcement Learning Interventions on Boundedly Rational Human Agents in Frictionful Tasks
Authors: Eura Nofshin, Siddharth Swaroop, Weiwei Pan, Susan Murphy, Finale Doshi-Velez
Abstract summary: We introduce a framework in which an AI agent intervenes on the parameters of a Markov Decision Process (MDP) belonging to a boundedly rational human agent. We show that AI planning with our human models can lead to helpful policies on a wide range of more complex, ground-truth humans.
Score: 25.507656595628376
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Abstract: Many important behavior changes are frictionful; they require individuals to expend effort over a long period with little immediate gratification. Here, an artificial intelligence (AI) agent can provide personalized interventions to help individuals stick to their goals. In these settings, the AI agent must personalize rapidly (before the individual disengages) and interpretably, to help us understand the behavioral interventions. In this paper, we introduce Behavior Model Reinforcement Learning (BMRL), a framework in which an AI agent intervenes on the parameters of a Markov Decision Process (MDP) belonging to a boundedly rational human agent. Our formulation of the human decision-maker as a planning agent allows us to attribute undesirable human policies (ones that do not lead to the goal) to their maladapted MDP parameters, such as an extremely low discount factor. Furthermore, we propose a class of tractable human models that captures fundamental behaviors in frictionful tasks. Introducing a notion of MDP equivalence specific to BMRL, we theoretically and empirically show that AI planning with our human models can lead to helpful policies on a wide range of more complex, ground-truth humans.