Limits of economic and strategic rationality for agents and MA systems

AI adoption of the game-theoretic paradigm although motivated and productive, suffers from basic limits for modelling autonomous agents and MA systems. First, we briefly restate game-theory's role for DAI and MAS: the introduction of formal prototypical social situations (“games”); the use of formal and sound notions, a self-interested view of autonomous agents, etc. Then, a number of criticisms, that have an impact on modelling intelligent social/individual action, are examined: the economicist interpretation of rationality; its instrumentalist conception, which leaves implicit the ends of agents' choices; the consequent multiple equilibria allowed by the theory; the context-unboundedness of rationality. Some contributions for a more heterarchic, context-bounded, architecture of rational agent are given, and a goal-based strategy, as distinct from a strictly utilitarian principle of decision-making, is proposed. Troubles of game-theory with multi-agent systems and in particular with modelling “cooperation” are outlined. Finally, some limits inherent in the notion of “incentive engineering” are pointed out.