ITR - (ECS+ASE) - (dmc+soc): Automated Mechanism Design

该ITR项目将对机制设计（MD）的新方法进行深入的理论和实验研究，即设计机制（例如投票协议，拍卖，离婚程序或协作评级系统）的科学，以便在代理人出于自身利益行事的情况下达到理想的结果。医学博士传统上是一项手工工作。在这项研究中提出的新方法是“自动机制设计（AMD）”，其中机制是为手头的特定问题实例计算创建的。这种方法有几个潜在的优点：1)它可以产生比迄今为止已知的更好的机制；2)它适用于迄今为止人工研究之外的问题类别；3)可以规避种子经济不可能的结果；4)它将设计的负担从人转移到机器。将研究AMD的新应用，如投票、调解和慈善捐赠的表达机制。其次，当设计人员不完全知道绘制代理类型的先验分布时，将研究近似最优AMD。第三，开发可扩展的AMD优化算法和AMD软件。其结果具有广泛的影响。更有效地分配社会物品、服务、信息和任务是可能的。例如，电子商务和投票应用程序将允许更公平的结果，更精明或消息更灵通的各方不能再利用知识更少的各方进行互动。安全性也可以得到增强，因为没有任何一方会被激励或能够操纵系统以达到他或她的利益。

This ITR project will conduct an in-depth theoretical and experimental study of a new approach to mechanism design (MD), i.e., the science of designing a mechanism (e.g., voting protocol, auction, divorce procedure, or collaborative rating system) so that a desirable outcome is reached despite the fact that agents act in their own self-interest. MD has traditionally been a manual endeavor. The new approach proposed in this research is "automated mechanism design (AMD)," where the mechanism is computationally created for the specific problem instance at hand. There are several potential advantages to this approach: 1) it can yield better mechanisms than the ones known to date; 2) it applies to problem classes beyond what has been studied manually to date; 3) it can circumvent seminal economic impossibility results; and 4) it shifts the burden of design from the human to the machine. New applications of AMD, such as voting, mediation, and expressive mechanisms for charity donations, will be studied. Second, approximately optimal AMD, when the designer does not completely know the prior distribution from which the agents types are drawn, will be studied. Third, scalable optimal algorithms for AMD, as well as an AMD software, will be developed. The results have broad impacts. More efficient allocation of social goods, services, information and tasks is possible. Ecommerce and voting applications, for example, would allow for more fair outcomes, where more savvy or better-informed parties can no longer exploit less knowledgeable parties to the interaction. Security can also be enhanced as no party will be motivated or able to manipulate the system to his or her advantage.