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Events for March 11, 2014
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CS Colloquium: Alice Gao (Harvard University) - Understanding Incentives in Social Computing
Tue, Mar 11, 2014 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Alice Gao , Harvard University
Talk Title: Understanding Incentives in Social Computing
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Social computing is an emerging field where human intelligence is harnessed in algorithmic problem solving. In particular, humans have or can efficiently gather relevant information about products, services and uncertain events and these information can be used to solve difficult problems. I have developed and analyzed such mechanisms for eliciting and aggregating dispersed information using both theoretical and experimental approaches. In this talk, I will focus on our online experiment on peer prediction mechanisms for eliciting truthful subjective feedback from participants. Peer prediction theory leverages the stochastic correlation of participants’ information and designs monetary rewards to induce a truthful equilibrium among the participants. However, these mechanisms also admit uninformative equilibria where participants provide no useful information. We conduct the first comprehensive empirical evaluation of a peer prediction mechanism in a repeated setting. Our results show that, in contrast to the theory, participants are not truthful and successfully coordinate on uninformative equilibria. In the absence of peer prediction, however, most players are consistently truthful, suggesting that these mechanisms may be harmful when truthful reporting has similar cost to strategic behavior. I will also describe some of my theoretical work on analyzing the strategic behavior of participants in prediction markets, and conclude by discussing some future directions.
This is based on joint work with Ryan P. Adams, Yiling Chen, Rick Goldstein, Ian A. Kash, Andrew Mao, and Jie Zhang.
Biography: Xi (Alice) Gao is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Harvard University. Her research focuses on designing and understanding algorithms and systems in social computing, crowdsourcing and human computation, using both theoretical and experimental approaches. As part of her PhD work, Alice designed and analyzed the incentives in mechanisms for eliciting and aggregating dispersed information, for applications such as eliciting subjective feedback about products and services and forecasting future events. Alice is the recipient of the Canadian NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship for Doctoral Students and the Siebel Scholarship. Before Harvard, Alice received her undergraduate degree from University of British Columbia in computer science and mathematics.
Host: Teamcore Group
Location: Charles Lee Powell Hall (PHE) - 223
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Sanjam Garg (IBM Research) - How to Obfuscate Software
Tue, Mar 11, 2014 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sanjam Garg, IBM Research
Talk Title: How to Obfuscate Software
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Software obfuscation aims to make the code of a computer program "unintelligible'' while preserving its functionality. This problem was first posed by Diffie and Hellman in 1976, and so far, most cryptographers believed that realizing obfuscation was impossible.
My research provides the first secure solution to this problem. Consequently several other long-standing open problems have been resolved. In this talk, I will describe these new developments and their implications.
Biography: Sanjam Garg is a Josef Raviv Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at IBM Research T.J. Watson. His research interests are in cryptography and security, and more broadly in theoretical computer science. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2013 and his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 2008. Sanjam's Ph.D. thesis provides the first candidate constructions of multilinear maps that have found extensive applications in cryptography, most notably to software obfuscation. He has published several papers in top cryptography and security conferences and is the recipient of various honors such as the Outstanding Graduating Ph.D. Student award at UCLA and the best paper award at EUROCRYPT 2013
Host: Shaddin Dughmi
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
