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  4. AI as a resource: strategy, uncertainty, and societal welfare

AI as a resource: strategy, uncertainty, and societal welfare

File(s)
Donahue_cornellgrad_0058F_14548.pdf (3.47 MB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://doi.org/10.7298/3tfg-jj61
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/116435
Collections
Cornell Theses and Dissertations
Author
Donahue, Kathleen
Abstract

In recent years, humanity has been faced with a new resource - artificial intelligence. AI can be a boon to society, or can also have negative impacts, especially with inappropriate use. My research agenda studies the societal impact of AI, particularly focusing on AI as a resource and on the strategic decisions that agents make in deciding how to use it. In this dissertation, I present work on some of the key strategic questions that arise in this framework: the decisions that agents make in jointly constructing and sharing AI models, the decisions that they make in dividing tasks between their own expertise and the expertise of a model, and the implications this has for how we think about handling societal resources. In the Part I, I present my work on "model-sharing games", which models scenarios such as federated learning or data cooperatives. In this setting, we view agents with data as game-theoretic players and analyze questions of stability, optimality, and fairness. In Part II, I discuss my work in modeling human-algorithm collaboration, specifically in scenarios where both the human and algorithm have helpful roles to play, but cannot solve the problem perfectly by themselves. Finally, in Part III I present work studying broader conceptions of resources, such as allocating resources with uncertain demand, biased crowdsourcing, and fairness in insurance rates with unequal risk levels.

Description
744 pages
Date Issued
2024-08
Committee Chair
Kleinberg, Jon
Committee Member
Joachims, Thorsten
Barocas, Solon
Degree Discipline
Computer Science
Degree Name
Ph. D., Computer Science
Degree Level
Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Type
dissertation or thesis
Link(s) to Catalog Record
https://newcatalog.library.cornell.edu/catalog/16611983

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