AF: Medium: Algorithmic Crowdsourcing Systems

众包指的是从全球工人群体中征集工作的模式，通常是小块的，每个人都对下一步要完成的任务和为谁完成的任务做出动态决定。众包系统本质上是基于算法的，否则协调任务将是压倒性的。算法取代了传统企业的管理和激励结构，负责优化工作流程，确定薪酬，将工人与任务匹配，以及学习工人和任务的模型。众包有可能改变生产力的分配方式，它已经在广泛的领域找到了应用，比如公民科学、文件转录和收集训练数据，用于机器学习，以弥合与人类智能水平的差距。这个项目的目标是为众包系统的设计开发一个有凝聚力的算法和激励理论。拟议的研究解决了在利用分散的资源和能力进行生产性工作方面的关键挑战，并寻求建立一个理论框架来指导众包系统的设计，以协调激励，具有适应性和健壮性，并以低成本实现高性能。研究人员感兴趣的是匹配和定价的作用，在开发方法来引出高质量，不可验证的贡献，并在拥抱人类行为的现实模型。研究人员将在即将召开的电子商务会议（EC13和EC14）上组织有关社会计算的研讨会，并继续招募妇女和其他代表性不足的群体加入该项目。

Crowdsourcing refers to the paradigm of eliciting work, typically in small pieces, from a global population of workers, each making dynamic decisions about which task to complete next, and for whom. Crowdsourcing systems are inherently algorithmic because the coordination task would otherwise be overwhelming. Algorithms take the place of the management and incentive structure of traditional firms, responsible for optimizing workflows, determining payments, matching workers with tasks, and learning models of workers and tasks.With the potential to transform the way in which productive effort is allocated, crowdsourcing is already finding application across a broad range of domains, such as citizen science, the transcription of documents, and collecting training data for use in machine learning for bridging the gap to human-level intelligence.  The goal of this project is to develop a cohesive theory of algorithms and incentives for the design of crowdsourcing systems.The proposed research addresses key challenges in harnessing decentralized resources and capabilities for productive work, and seeks to develop a theoretical framework to guide the design of crowdsourcing systems that align incentives, are adaptive and robust, and achieve high performance for low cost.  The investigators are interested in the roles of matching and pricing, in developing methods for eliciting high quality, unverifiable contributions, and in embracing realistic models of human behavior.The investigators will organize workshops on social computing at upcoming Conferences on Electronic Commerce (EC13 and EC14) and they continue to recruit women and other under-represented groups to join the project.