Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself When Thou Playest: Altruism in Game Theory

Abstract

Game theory is typically used to model the interaction among (software) agents in multiagent systems and, therefore, is a key topic at leading AI conferences. Game-theoretic models, however, are often based on the assumption that agents are perfectly rational and narrowly selfish and are interested only in maximizing their own gains, no matter what the costs to the other agents are. This summary paper presents various ways of introducing certain notions of altruism into existing game-theoretic models in both noncooperative and cooperative games, in the hope that simulating altruistic behavior in AI systems will make AI better suit real-world applications—and thus may make the real world a better place.