Using Computers to Find Out the Truth
Professor Boi Faltings
ECCAI Fellow, Director of AI Lab
Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland
Abstract :
One of the major problems for decision makers today is that they are far removed from the details that are often crucial for the success of their plans. On the other hand, the people who know these details are often not likely to report them truthfully, as it is not in their best interest to do so. The anonymity afforded by computing systems can help in this situation. I present several approaches to eliciting truthful information, in particular scoring rules, peer prediction methods and opinion polls.
Bio:
Boi Faltings is a full professor of computer science and director of the AI lab. His main research contributions are in the area of qualitative and case-based reasoning, constraint programming, distributed problem-solving, and recommender systems. He has co-founded 6 companies in e-commerce and computer security and acted as advisor to several other companies world-wide. Prof. Faltings has published over 300 refereed papers and graduated over 25 Ph.D. students, several of which have won national and international awards. Boi Faltings is a fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence. He has served as head of the computer science department from 1996-1998 and as head of the Institute of Core Computing Sciences from 2005-2008. He serves or served as associate editor of several journals, in particular the AI Journal (2000-2008), JAIR (2004-2007), Annals of AI and Mathematics (2008-today), and as member of editorial boards (AI Communications, AI Magazine, Constraints, and others). He also regularly serves in conference committees (IJCAI, AAAI, ECAI, and others) and have been program (co-)chair of several workshops and conferences. He holds a Diploma from ETH Zurich and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.