构建多智能体动态决策公平性评估环境,助力设计更公正的协同算法。
MAFE: Enabling Equitable Algorithm Design in Multi-Agent Multi-Stage Decision-Making Systems
- 设计可配置的多智能体公平环境,模拟真实复杂系统中的互动决策过程。
- 在贷款、医疗、教育三领域验证,揭示公平与性能间的权衡关系。
- 开源兼容主流MARL框架,支持可复现的公平算法研究与评估。
算法公平性常在静态或单智能体场景中研究,但现实中许多决策系统涉及多个相互作用实体,其多阶段行为共同影响长期结果。现有方法在孤立决策点应用公平性机制,难以缓解随时间累积的不平等。尽管近期研究将公平性建模为序列决策问题,通常假设集中式智能体或简化动态,限制了在复杂社会系统中的适用性。本文提出MAFE,一套多智能体公平环境,用于模拟现实、模块化且动态的系统,其中公平性由多个智能体的交互自然涌现。我们在贷款审批、医疗和高等教育三个领域验证MAFE,支持异构智能体、可配置干预措施及多种公平性度量。环境开源并兼容标准多智能体强化学习(MARL)库,支持公平感知策略的可复现评估。通过大量合作场景实验,我们展示了MAFE如何促进公平多智能体算法的设计,并揭示公平性、性能与协作之间的关键权衡。MAFE为动态多智能体公平研究提供了系统性基础。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Algorithmic fairness is often studied in static or single-agent settings, yet many real-world decision-making systems involve multiple interacting entities whose multi-stage actions jointly influence long-term outcomes. Existing fairness methods applied at isolated decision points frequently fail to mitigate disparities that accumulate over time. Although recent work has modeled fairness as a sequential decision-making problem, it typically assumes centralized agents or simplified dynamics, limiting its applicability to complex social systems. We introduce MAFE, a suite of Multi-Agent Fair Environments designed to simulate realistic, modular, and dynamic systems in which fairness emerges from the interplay of multiple agents. We demonstrate MAFEs across three domains -- loan processing, healthcare, and higher education -- that support heterogeneous agents, configurable interventions, and fairness metrics. The environments are open-source and compatible with standard multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) libraries, enabling reproducible evaluation of fairness-aware policies. Through extensive experiments on cooperative use cases, we demonstrate how MAFE facilitates the design of equitable multi-agent algorithms and reveals critical trade-offs between fairness, performance, and coordination. MAFE provides a foundation for systematic progress in dynamic, multi-agent fairness research.
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