Fair Algorithms for Multi-Agent Multi-Armed Bandits

Abstract

We propose a multi-agent variant of the classical multi-armed bandit problem, in which there are N agents and K arms, and pulling an arm generates a (possibly different) stochastic reward to each agent. Unlike the classical multi-armed bandit problem, the goal is not to learn the "best arm", as each agent may perceive a different arm as best for her. Instead, we seek to learn a fair distribution over arms. Drawing on a long line of research in economics and computer science, we use the Nash social welfare as our notion of fairness. We design multi-agent variants of three classic multi-armed bandit algorithms, and show that they achieve sublinear regret, now measured in terms of the Nash social welfare.