Game-Theory on Gabes Gulch

Coordinating Agents With Mechanism Design

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Imagine the large scale deployment of AI agents that make decisions on behalf of individuals or firms. For example, in online advertising auctions, an advertiser gives their high-level goal and constraints to a personal bidding agent. The responsibility of the bidding agent is to convert the advertiser’s goal and constraints into per-auction bids without human review. How do we ensure: (1) the advertiser’s goal is maximized, and (2) the outcome (who wins the auction) is efficient?

Mechanism Design - A Primer

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This post is an ongoing investigation of my alternative view of AI and the role of algorithms for multi-agent systems in markets.

Game theory is concerned with predicting the behavior of agents participating in an strategic interaction. We can also ask the inverse. Given a desired behavior of the agents, what strategic interaction would give rise to this behavior? For example, there are two firms $A$ and $B$. Each firm can choose to cooperate $C$ or defect $D$ which results in the following payoff matrix