Revisiting MAB based approaches to recursive delegation

Abstract: In this paper we examine the effectiveness of several multi-arm bandit algorithms when used as a trust system to select agents to delegate tasks to. In contrast to existing work, we allow for recursive delegation to occur. That is, a task delegated to one agent can be delegated onwards by that agent, with further delegation possible until some agent finally executes the task. We show that modifications to the standard multi-arm bandit algorithms can provide improvements in performance in such recursive delegation settings.