<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>When:</b> </font></font><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> Wednes</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">day, January 22,<span class="gmail_default"> </span>2025</span><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b><font color="#000000" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </font><u><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">11:30</font></u></b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><font color="#000000"><b><u><font face="arial, sans-serif"> am</font></u></b><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><u> CT</u> </font><font style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </font><font style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </font></b></font></span></font></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default"><div class="gmail_default"><div class="gmail_default"><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><b><font color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></b></p><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><font color="#500050">Where: </font></b><font color="#000000">Talk will be given </font><font color="#000000" style="font-weight:bold"><u>live, in-person</u></font><font style="font-weight:bold"> </font>at<br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"> TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"> 5th Floor, Room 530<b> </b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black"><br></span></b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px">Virtually:</b><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"> <i>via panopto: </i><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f4a3b975-8eb2-4527-8bcd-b26601364ea7" target="_blank"><b>livestream</b></a> </span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:georgia,serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font size="1"> </font><font size="1" style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">Note: This has been restricted to TTIC/UChicago Only</font></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"><font size="1"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></font></b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"> </font></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>Who: </b> <font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050"> </font></font></font></font></font>Meena Jagadeesan, UC Berkeley</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br></p><div style="border-top:none;border-right:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:2.25pt solid rgb(11,118,159);padding:0in 0in 1pt"></div><div><br></div></div></div><div class="gmail_default"><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Title</b>: Steering Machine Learning Ecosystems of Interacting Agents </font></div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><br></font><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Abstract</b>: Modern machine learning models—such as LLMs and recommender systems—interact with humans, companies, and other models in a broader ecosystem. However, these multi-agent interactions often induce unintended ecosystem-level outcomes such as clickbait in classical content recommendation ecosystems, and more recently, safety violations and market concentration in nascent LLM ecosystems. </font></div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><span id="m_4854681944577660916m_3472654299551744832m_-7192426628710110700m_2490042768065980467m_4737123993433002644m_4368420547379161196gmail-docs-internal-guid-e09326b4-7fff-2878-b3e5-7128bd052e1f"><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline">In this talk, I discuss my research on characterizing and steering ecosystem-level outcomes. I take an economic and statistical perspective on ML ecosystems, tracing outcomes back to the incentives of interacting agents and to the ML pipeline for training models. First, in LLM ecosystems, we show how analyzing a single model in isolation fails to capture ecosystem-level performance trends: for example, training a model with more resources can counterintuitively hurt ecosystem-level performance. To help steer ecosystem-level outcomes, we develop technical tools to assess how proposed policy interventions affect market entry, safety compliance, and user welfare. Then, turning to content recommendation ecosystems, we characterize a feedback loop between the recommender system and content creators, which shapes the diversity and quality of the content supply. Finally, I present a broader vision of ML ecosystems where multi-agent interactions are steered towards the desired algorithmic, market, and societal outcomes.</span></p></span><br></font><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Bio</b>: Meena Jagadeesan is a 5th year PhD student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, where she is advised by Michael I. Jordan and Jacob Steinhardt. Her research investigates multi-agent interactions in machine learning ecosystems from an economic and statistical perspective. She has received an Open Philanthropy AI Fellowship and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship.</font></div></div></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default"><b style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Host: </b><a href="mailto:avrim@ttic.edu" target="_blank" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b>Avrim Blum</b></a></div></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"><br clear="all"></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Mary C. Marre</span><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Administrative Support</font></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1"><b>Toyota Technological Institute</b></font></i></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1">6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, Rm 517</font></i></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">Chicago, IL 60637</font></i><br></font></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">773-834-1757</font></i></font></div><div><b><i><a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">mmarre@ttic.edu</font></a></i></b></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 3:18 PM Mary Marre <<a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu">mmarre@ttic.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div style="font-size:small"><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>When:</b> </font></font><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> Wednes</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">day, January 22,<span class="gmail_default"> </span>2025</span><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b><font color="#000000" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </font><u><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">11:30</font></u></b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><font color="#000000"><b><u><font face="arial, sans-serif"> am</font></u></b><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><u> CT</u> </font><font style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </font><font style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </font></b></font></span></font></font></div><div><div><div><div><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><b><font color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></b></p><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><font color="#500050">Where: </font></b><font color="#000000">Talk will be given </font><font color="#000000" style="font-weight:bold"><u>live, in-person</u></font><font style="font-weight:bold"> </font>at<br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"> TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"> 5th Floor, Room 530<b> </b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black"><br></span></b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px">Virtually:</b><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"> <i>via panopto: </i><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f4a3b975-8eb2-4527-8bcd-b26601364ea7" target="_blank"><b>livestream</b></a> </span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:georgia,serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font size="1"> </font><font size="1" style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">Note: This has been restricted to TTIC/UChicago Only</font></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"><font size="1"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></font></b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"> </font></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>Who: </b> <font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050"> </font></font></font></font></font>Meena Jagadeesan, UC Berkeley</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br></p><div style="border-top:none;border-right:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:2.25pt solid rgb(11,118,159);padding:0in 0in 1pt"></div><div><br></div></div></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Title</b>: Steering Machine Learning Ecosystems of Interacting Agents </font></div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><br></font><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Abstract</b>: Modern machine learning models—such as LLMs and recommender systems—interact with humans, companies, and other models in a broader ecosystem. However, these multi-agent interactions often induce unintended ecosystem-level outcomes such as clickbait in classical content recommendation ecosystems, and more recently, safety violations and market concentration in nascent LLM ecosystems. </font></div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><span id="m_4854681944577660916m_3472654299551744832m_-7192426628710110700m_2490042768065980467m_4737123993433002644m_4368420547379161196gmail-docs-internal-guid-e09326b4-7fff-2878-b3e5-7128bd052e1f"><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline">In this talk, I discuss my research on characterizing and steering ecosystem-level outcomes. I take an economic and statistical perspective on ML ecosystems, tracing outcomes back to the incentives of interacting agents and to the ML pipeline for training models. First, in LLM ecosystems, we show how analyzing a single model in isolation fails to capture ecosystem-level performance trends: for example, training a model with more resources can counterintuitively hurt ecosystem-level performance. To help steer ecosystem-level outcomes, we develop technical tools to assess how proposed policy interventions affect market entry, safety compliance, and user welfare. Then, turning to content recommendation ecosystems, we characterize a feedback loop between the recommender system and content creators, which shapes the diversity and quality of the content supply. Finally, I present a broader vision of ML ecosystems where multi-agent interactions are steered towards the desired algorithmic, market, and societal outcomes.</span></p></span><br></font><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Bio</b>: Meena Jagadeesan is a 5th year PhD student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, where she is advised by Michael I. Jordan and Jacob Steinhardt. Her research investigates multi-agent interactions in machine learning ecosystems from an economic and statistical perspective. She has received an Open Philanthropy AI Fellowship and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship.</font></div></div></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><div><b style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Host: </b><a href="mailto:avrim@ttic.edu" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" target="_blank"><b>Avrim Blum</b></a></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br clear="all"></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Mary C. Marre</span><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Administrative Support</font></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1"><b>Toyota Technological Institute</b></font></i></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1">6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, Rm 517</font></i></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">Chicago, IL 60637</font></i><br></font></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">773-834-1757</font></i></font></div><div><b><i><a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">mmarre@ttic.edu</font></a></i></b></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jan 15, 2025 at 4:51 PM Mary Marre <<a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank">mmarre@ttic.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div style="font-size:small"><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>When:</b> </font></font><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> Wednes</font><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">day, January 22,<span class="gmail_default"> </span>2025</span><font style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"> at</font><b><font color="#000000" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </font><u><font face="arial, sans-serif" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)" color="#000000">11:30</font></u></b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><font color="#000000"><b><u><font face="arial, sans-serif"> am</font></u></b><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><u> CT</u> </font><font style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </font><font style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </font></b></font></span></font></font></div><div><div><div><div><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><b><font color="#500050" face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></b></p><p style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;margin:0px"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><font color="#500050">Where: </font></b><font color="#000000">Talk will be given </font><font color="#000000" style="font-weight:bold"><u>live, in-person</u></font><font style="font-weight:bold"> </font>at<br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"> TTIC, 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue</font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"> 5th Floor, Room 530<b> </b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black"><br></span></b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px">Virtually:</b><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"> <i>via panopto: </i><a href="https://uchicago.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f4a3b975-8eb2-4527-8bcd-b26601364ea7" target="_blank"><b>livestream</b></a> </span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:georgia,serif;letter-spacing:0.2px"><font size="1" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </font><font size="1" style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">Note: This has been restricted to TTIC/UChicago Only</font></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><b style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"><font size="1"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></font></b><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(80,0,80);line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);letter-spacing:0.2px"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif"> </font></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><font style="color:rgb(80,0,80);vertical-align:inherit"><font style="vertical-align:inherit"><b>Who: </b> <font color="#500050"> </font><font color="#000000"><font color="#500050"> </font></font></font></font></font>Meena Jagadeesan, UC Berkeley</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br></p><div style="border-top:none;border-right:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:2.25pt solid rgb(11,118,159);padding:0in 0in 1pt"></div><div><br></div></div></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Title</b>: <span>Steering Machine Learning Ecosystems of Interacting Agents </span></font></div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><br></font><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Abstract</b>: <span>Modern machine learning models—such as LLMs and recommender systems—interact with humans, companies, and other models in a broader ecosystem. However, these multi-agent interactions often induce unintended ecosystem-level outcomes such as clickbait in classical content recommendation ecosystems, and more recently, safety violations and market concentration in nascent LLM ecosystems. </span></font></div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><span id="m_4854681944577660916m_3472654299551744832m_-7192426628710110700m_2490042768065980467m_4737123993433002644m_4368420547379161196gmail-docs-internal-guid-e09326b4-7fff-2878-b3e5-7128bd052e1f"><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline">In this talk, I discuss my research on characterizing and steering ecosystem-level outcomes. I take an economic and statistical perspective on ML ecosystems, tracing outcomes back to the incentives of interacting agents and to the ML pipeline for training models. First, in LLM ecosystems, we show how analyzing a single model in isolation fails to capture ecosystem-level performance trends: for example, training a model with more resources can counterintuitively hurt ecosystem-level performance. To help steer ecosystem-level outcomes, we develop technical tools to assess how proposed policy interventions affect market entry, safety compliance, and user welfare. Then, turning to content recommendation ecosystems, we characterize a feedback loop between the recommender system and content creators, which shapes the diversity and quality of the content supply. Finally, I present a broader vision of ML ecosystems where multi-agent interactions are steered towards the desired algorithmic, market, and societal outcomes. </span></p></span><br></font><div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>Bio</b>: <span>Meena Jagadeesan is a 5th year PhD student in Computer Science at UC <span>Berkeley</span>, where she is advised by Michael I. Jordan and Jacob Steinhardt. Her research investigates multi-agent interactions in machine learning ecosystems from an economic and statistical perspective. She has received an Open Philanthropy AI Fellowship and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship. </span></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><div><b style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Host: </b><a href="mailto:avrim@ttic.edu" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif" target="_blank"><b>Avrim Blum</b></a></div></div><br><br clear="all"></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Mary C. Marre</span><br></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Administrative Support</font></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1"><b>Toyota Technological Institute</b></font></i></div><div><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6" size="1">6045 S. Kenwood Avenue, Rm 517</font></i></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">Chicago, IL 60637</font></i><br></font></div><div><font size="1"><i><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#3d85c6">773-834-1757</font></i></font></div><div><b><i><a href="mailto:mmarre@ttic.edu" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">mmarre@ttic.edu</font></a></i></b></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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