Computational Foundations of Social Choice (CFSC)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This collaborative research project will address some of the key issues in computational social choice, an interdisciplinary field of study at the interface of social choice theory and computer science. Computational social choice is concerned with the application of computational techniques to the study of social choice mechanisms, such as voting rules and fair division protocols, and with the integration of social choice paradigms into computing. This is a young and dynamic field of investigation. While recent years have seen the publication of a number of important isolated results, to date there has been no coordinated effort by a larger group of scientists. This project will bundle the expertise of some of the most active researchers in the field, who have worked on different aspects of computational social choice in the past, and who have come to this area from very different backgrounds: theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, logic, economics, and political science.The broad aim of this project is to develop sound foundations for the scientific discipline of computational social choice. We plan to work towards this goal along three main dimensions: Firstly, we want to deepen our understanding of algorithmic and complexity-theoretic issues in social choice (social choice and theoretical computer science). Secondly, we intend to develop logic-based languages for modeling and reasoning about social choice problems and preference structures (social choice and logic). And thirdly, we shall apply established techniques from artificial intelligence, such as preference elicitation and learning, to problems of social choice (social choice and artificial intelligence). Besides these scientific aims and objectives, being the first large-scale international project on computational social choice, this project also has the potential to provide a clear focus to the research community currently forming around these important and exciting topics.