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arXiv · 2407.20276

Assessing AI Utility: The Random Guesser Test for Sequential Decision-Making Systems

Shun Ide·Allison Blunt·Djallel Bouneffouf
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Abstract

We propose a general approach to quantitatively assessing the risk and vulnerability of artificial intelligence (AI) systems to biased decisions. The guiding principle of the proposed approach is that any AI algorithm must outperform a random guesser. This may appear trivial, but empirical results from a simplistic sequential decision-making scenario involving roulette games show that sophisticated AI-based approaches often underperform the random guesser by a significant margin. We highlight that modern recommender systems may exhibit a similar tendency to favor overly low-risk options. We argue that this "random guesser test" can serve as a useful tool for evaluating the utility of AI actions, and also points towards increasing exploration as a potential improvement to such systems.

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Shun Ide, Allison Blunt, Djallel Bouneffouf. 2024-07-25. Assessing AI Utility: The Random Guesser Test for Sequential Decision-Making Systems. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.20276

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