Related papers: The Externalities of Exploration and How Data Dive…
Greedy algorithms are widely used for problems in machine learning such as feature selection and set function optimization. Unfortunately, for large datasets, the running time of even greedy algorithms can be quite high. This is because for…
In many real life situations, including job and loan applications, gatekeepers must make justified and fair real-time decisions about a person's fitness for a particular opportunity. In this paper, we aim to accomplish approximate group…
The maximization of submodular functions is an NP-Hard problem for certain subclasses of functions, for which a simple greedy algorithm has been shown to guarantee a solution whose quality is within 1/2 of the optimal. When this algorithm…
In the incentivized exploration model, a principal aims to explore and learn over time by interacting with a sequence of self-interested agents. It has been recently understood that the main challenge in designing incentive-compatible…
Resource allocation systems provide the fundamental support for the normal functioning and well being of the modern society, and can be modeled as minority games. A ubiquitous dynamical phenomenon is the emergence of herding, where a vast…
Unconscious bias has been shown to influence how we assess our peers, with consequences for hiring, promotions and admissions. In this work, we focus on affinity bias, the component of unconscious bias which leads us to prefer people who…
Investigations of social influence in collective decision-making have become possible due to recent technologies and platforms that record interactions in far larger groups than could be studied before. Herding and its impact on…
Machine learning algorithms play an important role in a variety of important decision-making processes, including targeted advertisement displays, home loan approvals, and criminal behavior predictions. Given the far-reaching impact of…
Language Model (LM) agents are increasingly used in complex open-ended decision-making tasks, from AI coding to physical AI. A core requirement in these settings is the ability to both explore the problem space and exploit acquired…
Algorithmic decision-making in societal contexts, such as retail pricing, loan administration, recommendations on online platforms, etc., can be framed as stochastic optimization under bandit feedback, which typically requires…
While popularity bias is recognized to play a crucial role in recommmender (and other ranking-based) systems, detailed analysis of its impact on collective user welfare has largely been lacking. We propose and theoretically analyze a…
Algorithmic decision-making systems are increasingly used throughout the public and private sectors to make important decisions or assist humans in making these decisions with real social consequences. While there has been substantial…
We consider Bayesian optimization of expensive-to-evaluate experiments that generate vector-valued outcomes over which a decision-maker (DM) has preferences. These preferences are encoded by a utility function that is not known in closed…
The long-term impact of algorithmic decision making is shaped by the dynamics between the deployed decision rule and individuals' response. Focusing on settings where each individual desires a positive classification---including many…
Sequential decision tasks with incomplete information are characterized by the exploration problem; namely the trade-off between further exploration for learning more about the environment and immediate exploitation of the accrued…
An individual's decisions are often guided by those of his or her peers, i.e., neighbors in a social network. Presumably, being privy to the experiences of others aids in learning and decision making, but how much advantage does an…
Sufficient exploration is paramount for the success of a reinforcement learning agent. Yet, exploration is rarely assessed in an algorithm-independent way. We compare the behavior of three data-based, offline exploration metrics described…
We study the online clustering problem where data items arrive in an online fashion. The algorithm maintains a clustering of data items into similarity classes. Upon arrival of v, the relation between v and previously arrived items is…
Designing fair algorithmic decision systems requires balancing model performance with fairness toward affected individuals: More fairness might require sacrificing some performance and vice versa, yet the space of possible trade-offs is…
We introduce a novel algorithmic approach to content recommendation based on adaptive clustering of exploration-exploitation ("bandit") strategies. We provide a sharp regret analysis of this algorithm in a standard stochastic noise setting,…