Choosing with unknown causal information: Action-outcome probabilities for decision making can be grounded in causal models

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Hauptverfasser: Soto, Mauricio Gonzalez, Danks, David, Balderas, Hugo J. Escalante, Sucar, L. Enrique
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2019
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author Soto, Mauricio Gonzalez
Danks, David
Balderas, Hugo J. Escalante
Sucar, L. Enrique
author_facet Soto, Mauricio Gonzalez
Danks, David
Balderas, Hugo J. Escalante
Sucar, L. Enrique
contents Decision-making under uncertainty and causal thinking are fundamental aspects of intelligent reasoning. Decision-making has been well studied when the available information is considered at the associative (probabilistic) level. The classical Theorems of von Neumann-Morgenstern and Savage provide a formal criterion for rational choice using associative information: maximize expected utility. There is an ongoing debate around the origin of probabilities involved in such calculation. In this work, we will show how the probabilities for decision-making can be grounded in causal models by considering decision problems in which the available actions and consequences are causally connected. In this setting, actions are regarded as an intervention over a causal model. Then, we extend a previous causal decision-making result, which relies on a known causal model, to the case in which the causal mechanism that controls some environment is unknown to a rational decision-maker. In this way, action-outcome probabilities can be grounded in causal models in known and unknown cases. Finally, as an application, we extend the well-known concept of Nash Equilibrium to the case in which the players of a strategic game consider causal information.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_1907_11752
institution arXiv
publishDate 2019
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Choosing with unknown causal information: Action-outcome probabilities for decision making can be grounded in causal models
Soto, Mauricio Gonzalez
Danks, David
Balderas, Hugo J. Escalante
Sucar, L. Enrique
Artificial Intelligence
Methodology
Decision-making under uncertainty and causal thinking are fundamental aspects of intelligent reasoning. Decision-making has been well studied when the available information is considered at the associative (probabilistic) level. The classical Theorems of von Neumann-Morgenstern and Savage provide a formal criterion for rational choice using associative information: maximize expected utility. There is an ongoing debate around the origin of probabilities involved in such calculation. In this work, we will show how the probabilities for decision-making can be grounded in causal models by considering decision problems in which the available actions and consequences are causally connected. In this setting, actions are regarded as an intervention over a causal model. Then, we extend a previous causal decision-making result, which relies on a known causal model, to the case in which the causal mechanism that controls some environment is unknown to a rational decision-maker. In this way, action-outcome probabilities can be grounded in causal models in known and unknown cases. Finally, as an application, we extend the well-known concept of Nash Equilibrium to the case in which the players of a strategic game consider causal information.
title Choosing with unknown causal information: Action-outcome probabilities for decision making can be grounded in causal models
topic Artificial Intelligence
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.11752