Abstract

For sponsored search auctions, we consider contextual multi-armed bandit problem in the presence of strategic agents. In this setting, at each round, an advertising platform (center) runs an auction to select the best-suited ads relevant to the query posted by the user. It is in the best interest of the center to select an ad that has a high expected value (ie, probability of getting a click value it derives from a click of the ad). The probability of getting a click (CTR) is unknown to the center and depends on the user's profile (context) posting the query. Further, the value derived for a click is the private information to the advertiser and thus needs to be elicited truthfully. The existing solution in this setting is not practical as it suffers from very high regret ().

Abstract

A blockchain, such as Bitcoin, is an append-only, secure, transparent, distributed ledger. A fair blockchain is expected to have healthy metrics; high honest mining power, low processing latency, ie, low wait times for transactions and stable price of consumption, ie, the minimum transaction fee required to have a transaction processed. As Bitcoin matures, the influx of transactions increases and the block rewards become insignificant. We show that under these conditions, it becomes hard to maintain the health of the blockchain. In Bitcoin, under these mature operating conditions (MOC), the miners would find it challenging to cover their mining costs as there would be no more revenue from merely mining a block. It may cause miners not to continue mining, threatening the blockchain's security. Further, as we show in this paper using simulations, the cost of acting in favor of the health of the blockchain, under MOC, is very high in Bitcoin, causing all miners to process transactions greedily. It leads to stranded transactions, ie, transactions offering low transaction fees, experiencing unreasonably high processing latency. To make matters worse, a compounding effect of these stranded transactions is the rising price of consumption. Such phenomena not only induce unfairness as experienced by the miners and the users but also deteriorate the health of the blockchain.

Abstract

In the last decade, civic crowdfunding has proved to be effective in generating funds for the provision of public projects. However, the existing literature deals only with citizen's with positive valuation and symmetric belief towards the project's provision. In this work, we present novel mechanisms which break these two barriers, i.e., mechanisms which incorporate negative valuation and asymmetric belief, independently. For negative valuation, we present a methodology for converting existing mechanisms to mechanisms that incorporate agents with negative valuations. Particularly, we adapt existing PPR and PPS mechanisms, to present novel PPRN and PPSN mechanisms which incentivize strategic agents to contribute to the project based on their true preference. With respect to asymmetric belief, we propose a reward scheme Belief Based Reward (BBR) based on Robust Bayesian Truth Serum mechanism. With BBR, we propose a general mechanism for civic crowdfunding which incorporates asymmetric agents. We leverage PPR and PPS, to present PPRx and PPSx. We prove that in PPRx and PPSx, agents with greater belief towards the project's provision contribute more than agents with lesser belief. Further, we also show that contributions are such that the project is provisioned at equilibrium.

Abstract

In recent years, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have received significant attention from the research community. With a straightforward implementation and outstanding results, GANs have been used for numerous applications. Despite the success, GANs lack a proper theoretical explanation. These models suffer from issues like mode collapse, non-convergence, and instability during training. To address these issues, researchers have proposed theoretically rigorous frameworks inspired by varied fields of Game theory, Statistical theory, Dynamical systems, etc. In this paper, we propose to give an appropriate structure to study these contributions systematically. We essentially categorize the papers based on the issues they raise and the kind of novelty they introduce to address them. Besides, we provide insight into how each of the discussed articles solves the concerned problems. We compare and contrast different results and put forth a summary of theoretical contributions about GANs with focus on image/visual applications. We expect this summary paper to give a bird’s eye view to a person wishing to understand the theoretical progress in GANs so far.

Abstract

We consider a setting where public resources are to be allocated among competing and strategic agents so as to maximize social welfare (the objects should be allocated to those who value them the most). This is called allocative efficiency (AE). We need the agents to report their valuations for obtaining these resources, truthfully referred to as dominant strategy incentive compatibility (DSIC). We use auction-based mechanisms to achieve AE and DSIC yet budget balance cannot be ensured, due to Green-Laffont Impossibility Theorem. That is, the net transfer of money cannot be zero. This problem has been addressed by designing a redistribution mechanism so as to ensure a minimum surplus of money as well as AE and DSIC. The objective could be to minimize surplus in expectation or in the worst case and these objects could be homogeneous or heterogeneous. Designing redistribution mechanisms which perform well in expectation becomes analytically challenging for heterogeneous settings. In this paper, we take a completely different, data-driven approach. We train a neural network to determine an optimal redistribution mechanism based on given settings with both the objectives, optimal in expectation and optimal in the worst case. We also propose a loss function to train a neural network to optimize worst case. We design neural networks with the underlying rebate functions being linear as well as nonlinear in terms of bids of the agents. Our networks' performances are same as the theoretical guarantees for the cases where it has been solved. We observe that a neural network based redistribution mechanism for homogeneous …

Abstract

We describe the design of an autonomous electricity broker agent, VidyutVanika, the runner-up of the 2018 PowerTAC competition. The agent uses techniques from reinforcement learning, dynamic programming and other areas of machine learning to seek appropriate actions in tariff and wholesale market of the PowerTAC simulation environment. The novelty of our agent lies in defining the reward functions of suitably defined Markov decision processes (MDPs), solving these MDPs, and applying these solutions to real actions in the market. In addition, VidyutVanika uses a neural network to predict the energy consumption of various customers using weather data. The usage forecasts, so obtained, are used to place orders in day-ahead wholesale market. These forecasts also helps in reducing the balancing costs incurred by the broker.

Abstract

Methods and systems are disclosed for providing cloud services to multiple customers in a cloud. One embodiment includes receiving a number of requests for the cloud services from the multiple customers simultaneously or substantially simultaneously; prioritizing the requests based on a probability distribution of actually deploying a service, a budget of the customers, and an expected demand of the requested service based on the probability distribution; generating a number of cloud configurations along with a number of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for the customers based on prioritization of the requests, a class & past behavior of the customers, and a current demand of the cloud services, the SLAs of the customers include differentiated price offering; recommending the cloud configurations and the SLAs to the customers; allowing the customers to negotiate terms of the SLAs; and providing the cloud …

Abstract

In many practical applications such as crowd-sourcing and online advertisement, use of mechanism design (auction-based mechanisms) depends upon inherent stochastic parameters which are unknown. These parameters are learnt using multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms. The mechanisms which incorporate MAB are referred to as Multi-Armed-Bandit Mechanisms. While most of the MAB mechanisms focus on frequentist approaches like upper confidence bound algorithms, recent work has shown that using Bayesian approaches like Thompson sampling results in mechanisms with better regret bounds; although lower regret is obtained at the cost of the mechanism ending up with a weaker game theoretic property ie Within-Period Dominant Strategy Incentive Compatibility (WP-DSIC). The existing payment rules used in the Thompson sampling based mechanisms may cause negative utility to the auctioneer. In addition, if we wish to minimize the cost to the auctioneer, it is very challenging to design payment rules that satisfy WP-DSIC while learning through Thompson sampling. In our work, we propose a data-driven approach for designing MAB-mechanisms. Specifically, we use neural networks for designing the payment rule which is WP-DSIC, while the allocation rule is modeled using Thompson sampling. Our results, in the setting of crowd-sourcing for recruiting quality workers, indicate that the learned payment rule guarantees better cost while maximizing the social welfare and also ensuring reduced variance in the utilities to the agents.

Abstract

We focus on the aggregation of citizen preferences for public projects through civic crowdfunding. Existing civic crowdfunding mechanisms consider only agents with positive valuation towards the public project. Moreover, these mechanisms assume that each agent has a symmetric belief about the project getting provisioned. As public projects aim to cater to the majority, they should be provisioned only if the majority prefers it. To incorporate negative valuations, we propose a methodology to convert existing civic crowdfunding mechanisms for positive preferences to cater to markets having both types of agents. Specifically, we adapt existing PPR and PPS mechanisms to design PPRN and PPSN, that incentivize agents to contribute towards or against the project’s provision: based on their preference. Besides, to address asymmetric beliefs, we propose a novel reward scheme, Belief Based Reward (BBR) based on Robust Bayesian Truth Serum (RBTS) mechanism. BBR rewards agents based on their belief towards the project’s provision. Using this reward scheme, we introduce a general mechanism for civic crowdfunding which allows for agents having asymmetric beliefs towards the project getting provisioned and incentivizes them to contribute towards the project’s provision. We illustrate the general mechanism by designing two novel mechanisms, namely PPRx and PPSx, adapting PPR and PPS respectively, and prove that in both the mechanisms the project is provisioned at equilibrium

Abstract

Auctions are mechanisms which facilitate the buying and selling of goods/items amongst a group of agents. In general, a combinatorial auction, where the agents can bid for combination (s) of items, yields a higher revenue than selling the goods/items individually.