Date & Time:
October 4, 2024 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Location:
JCL 257
10/04/2024 11:00 AM 10/04/2024 12:00 PM America/Chicago Daniel Halpern (Harvard) – Aggregating Preferences with Limited Queries JCL 257

Abstract: Social choice theory studies how to aggregate individual preferences into a collective decision for society. Traditionally, this assumes full access to each individual’s complete set of preferences. However, modern online platforms promoting civic participation, such as pol.is, aim to solve social choice problems that do not fit neatly into this framework. These platforms aggregate complex preferences over a vast space of alternatives, rendering it infeasible to learn any individual’s preferences completely. Instead, preferences are elicited by asking each user a simple query about a small subset of alternatives. Based on a series of works, this talk will present a simple model for analyzing what is possible in these scenarios, along with a variety of positive and negative results. Specifically, I will show efficient algorithms that produce representative outcomes with limited queries, as well as lower bound limits on what can possibly be learned in information-theoretic sense and when an exponential number of queries may be required.

Speakers

Daniel Halpern

PhD Candidate, Harvard University

Daniel Halpern is a final-year PhD student at Harvard University advised by Ariel Procaccia. He is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Siebel Scholarship. His research broadly sits at the intersection of algorithms, economics, and artificial intelligence. Specifically, he considers novel settings where groups of people need to make collective decisions, such as summarizing population views on large-scale opinion aggregation websites, using participant data to fine-tune large language models, and selecting panel members for citizens’ assemblies. In each, he develops provably fair solutions to aggregate individual preferences.

Related News & Events

UChicago CS News

Ph.D. Student Jibang Wu Receives the Stigler Center Ph.D. Dissertation Award for His Work Modeling the Incentive Structures of Reward and Recommendation–Based Systems

Oct 24, 2024
UChicago CS News

Rebecca Willett Receives the SIAM Activity Group on Data Science Career Prize

Oct 23, 2024
UChicago CS News

UChicago CS Researchers Shine at UIST 2024 with Papers, Posters, Workshops and Demonstrations

Oct 10, 2024
UChicago CS News

UChicago Scientists Receive Grant to Expand Global Data Management Platform, Globus

Oct 03, 2024
UChicago CS News

UChicago Researchers Demonstrate the Quantifiable Uniqueness of Former President Donald Trump’s Language Use

Sep 30, 2024
UChicago CS News

Five UChicago CS students named to Siebel Scholars class of 2025

Sep 20, 2024
UChicago CS News

NSF and Simons Foundation launch $20 million National AI Research Institute in Astronomy

Sep 18, 2024
In the News

Data Ecology: A Socio-Technical Approach to Controlling Dataflows

Sep 18, 2024
UChicago CS News

Ph.D. Student Shawn Shan Named MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 and Innovator of the Year

Sep 16, 2024
UChicago CS News

Ben Zhao Named to TIME Magazine’s TIME100 AI List

Sep 05, 2024
UChicago CS News

Ian Foster and Rick Stevens Named to HPCwire’s 35 Legends List

Aug 28, 2024
UChicago CS News

University of Chicago to Develop Software for Effort to Create a National Quantum Virtual Laboratory

Aug 28, 2024
arrow-down-largearrow-left-largearrow-right-large-greyarrow-right-large-yellowarrow-right-largearrow-right-smallbutton-arrowclosedocumentfacebookfacet-arrow-down-whitefacet-arrow-downPage 1CheckedCheckedicon-apple-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-google-t5icon-office365-t5icon-outlook-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-outlookcom-t5backgroundLayer 1icon-yahoo-t5backgroundLayer 1internal-yellowinternalintranetlinkedinlinkoutpauseplaypresentationsearch-bluesearchshareslider-arrow-nextslider-arrow-prevtwittervideoyoutube