Mechanism Design for Alignment and Control

Abstract:We develop a framework for mechanism design with AI agents whose alignment (preferences) and capabilities (feasible actions and information) are unknown. We want such agents to act on our behalf so mechanisms must incentivize both honesty and obedience. A one-sided imitation structure---capabilities can be concealed but not counterfeited---yields a revelation principle, a characterization of implementable policies via nested cyclical monotonicity, and conditions under which eliciting higher-order beliefs can discipline multiple agents. We apply our framework to stylized examples of (i) sandbagging in which a more capable agent pretends to be less capable; (ii) an alignment--interpretability trade-off, where the two are substitutes in the instrument but complements in value; (iii) discipline via peer scoring; (iv) coupling rewards to induce competition among multiple agents; and (v) scalable oversight and reward shaping.

Theoretical Economics (econ.TH); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT)

arXiv:2609.01595 [econ.TH]

(or arXiv:2609.01595v1 [econ.TH] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.01595 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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