Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Waldner, Dylan, Kungurtsev, Vyacheslav, Ashimosi, Mitchelle
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16916
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917350965510144
author Waldner, Dylan
Kungurtsev, Vyacheslav
Ashimosi, Mitchelle
author_facet Waldner, Dylan
Kungurtsev, Vyacheslav
Ashimosi, Mitchelle
contents This paper investigates the dynamics of noncooperative interactions between artificial intelligence agents and human decision-makers in strategic environments. In particular, motivated by extensive literature in behavioral Economics, human agents are more faithfully modeled with respect to the state of the art using Prospect Theoretic preferences, while AI agents are modeled with standard expected utility maximization. Prospect Theory incorporates known cognitive heuristics employed by humans, including reference dependence and greater loss aversion relative to utility to relative gains. This paper runs different combinations of expected utility and prospect theoretic agents in a number of classic matrix games as well as examples specialized to tease out distinctions in strategic behavior with respect to preference functions, to explore the emergent behaviors from mixed population (human vs. AI) competition. Extensive numerical simulations are performed across AI, aware humans (those with full knowledge of the game structure and payoffs), and learning Prospect Agents (i.e., for AIs representing humans). A number of interesting observations and patterns show up, spanning barely distinguishable behavior, behavior corroborating Prospect preference anomalies in the theoretical literature, and unexpected surprises. Code can be found at https://github.com/dylanwaldner/noncooperative-human-AI.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_16916
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Noncooperative Human-AI Agent Dynamics
Waldner, Dylan
Kungurtsev, Vyacheslav
Ashimosi, Mitchelle
Computer Science and Game Theory
Multiagent Systems
This paper investigates the dynamics of noncooperative interactions between artificial intelligence agents and human decision-makers in strategic environments. In particular, motivated by extensive literature in behavioral Economics, human agents are more faithfully modeled with respect to the state of the art using Prospect Theoretic preferences, while AI agents are modeled with standard expected utility maximization. Prospect Theory incorporates known cognitive heuristics employed by humans, including reference dependence and greater loss aversion relative to utility to relative gains. This paper runs different combinations of expected utility and prospect theoretic agents in a number of classic matrix games as well as examples specialized to tease out distinctions in strategic behavior with respect to preference functions, to explore the emergent behaviors from mixed population (human vs. AI) competition. Extensive numerical simulations are performed across AI, aware humans (those with full knowledge of the game structure and payoffs), and learning Prospect Agents (i.e., for AIs representing humans). A number of interesting observations and patterns show up, spanning barely distinguishable behavior, behavior corroborating Prospect preference anomalies in the theoretical literature, and unexpected surprises. Code can be found at https://github.com/dylanwaldner/noncooperative-human-AI.
title Noncooperative Human-AI Agent Dynamics
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16916