Related papers: Distortion in Social Choice Problems: The First 15…
The metric distortion of a randomized social choice function (RSCF) quantifies its worst-case approximation ratio to the optimal social cost when the voters' costs for alternatives are given by distances in a metric space. This notion has…
Democratic societies increasingly rely on communication networks to aggregate citizen preferences and information, yet these same networks can systematically mislead voters under certain conditions. We introduce an agent-based model that…
To successfully navigate its environment, an agent must construct and maintain representations of the other agents that it encounters. Such representations are useful for many tasks, but they are not without cost. As a result, agents must…
Selection bias in recommender system arises from the recommendation process of system filtering and the interactive process of user selection. Many previous studies have focused on addressing selection bias to achieve unbiased learning of…
Public sector agencies perform the critical task of implementing the redistributive role of the State by acting as the leading provider of critical public services that many rely on. In recent years, public agencies have been increasingly…
The integrity of elections is central to democratic systems. However, a myriad of malicious actors aspire to influence election outcomes for financial or political benefit. A common means to such ends is by manipulating perceptions of the…
We model the joint distribution of choice probabilities and decision times in binary choice tasks as the solution to a problem of optimal sequential sampling, where the agent is uncertain of the utility of each action and pays a constant…
We discuss two distinct approaches, for distorting risk measures of sums of dependent random variables, which preserve the property of coherence. The first, based on distorted expectations, operates on the survival function of the sum. The…
Studying corruption presents unique challenges. Recent work in the spirit of computational social science exploits newly available data and methods to give a fresh perspective on this important topic. In this chapter we highlight some of…
How can intelligent agents solve a diverse set of tasks in a data-efficient manner? The disentangled representation learning approach posits that such an agent would benefit from separating out (disentangling) the underlying structure of…
For a binary choice problem, the spatial coordination of decisions in an agent community is investigated both analytically and by means of stochastic computer simulations. The individual decisions are based on different local information…
Automated data-driven decision making systems are increasingly being used to assist, or even replace humans in many settings. These systems function by learning from historical decisions, often taken by humans. In order to maximize the…
Social media is central to how young people maintain relationships, develop identity, and access communities, yet dominant platform designs often leave youth feeling disempowered rather than supported. My dissertation argues that youth…
Humans have been arguing about the benefits of dictatorial versus democratic regimes for millennia. Despite drastic differences between the dictatorships in the world, one of the key common features is the \emph{Dictator's Dilemma} as…
Delegation covers a broad class of problems in which a principal doesn't have the resources or expertise necessary to complete a task by themselves, so they delegate the task to an agent whose interests may not be aligned with their own.…
Spreadsheet users regularly deal with uncertainty in their data, for example due to errors and estimates. While an insight into data uncertainty can help in making better informed decisions, prior research suggests that people often use…
Orseau and Ring, as well as Dewey, have recently described problems, including self-delusion, with the behavior of agents using various definitions of utility functions. An agent's utility function is defined in terms of the agent's history…
We study the consumption behaviour of an asymmetric network of heterogeneous agents in the framework of discrete choice models with stochastic decision rules. We assume that the interactions among agents are uniquely specified by their…
In cognitive psychology, automatic and self-reinforcing irrational thought patterns are known as cognitive distortions. Left unchecked, patients exhibiting these types of thoughts can become stuck in negative feedback loops of unhealthy…
Secrecy in communication systems is measured herein by the distortion that an adversary incurs. The transmitter and receiver share secret key, which they use to encrypt communication and ensure distortion at an adversary. A model is…