[CS] TODAY:Jibang Wu Candidacy Exam/Apr 7, 2025

[via cs]

This is an announcement of Jibang Wu's Candidacy Exam.
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Candidate: Jibang Wu

Date: Monday, April 07, 2025

Time: 11 am CST

Remote Location: https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/98692327865?pwd=bk6IyTCsDXX0RMLusAKqJaI2xj0Yue.1&from=addon

Location: JCL 354

Title: Towards a theory of strategic alignment

Abstract: While intelligent systems today are becoming more advanced, their design often overlooks critical incentive structures within their operating environments, risking unintended consequences. This talk presents my research on advancing the design principles of intelligent systems toward strategic alignment—a conceptual framework that seeks to harmonize the interests of all stakeholders to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. In the first part of the talk, I will introduce the decision alignment problem, where the outcomes of data-driven decisions can be subject to the strategic responses from stakeholders under conflicting interest and asymmetric information. This discussion will begin with the Markov persuasion process, which aims to enhance the long-term impact of algorithmic feeds and conclude with a broader research agenda on principal-agent decision-making frameworks. The second part of the talk will introduce the feedback alignment problem, where learning data may be strategically withheld or manipulated by data providers. I will begin with the application of self-evaluation mechanisms to improve conference peer review systems and motivate it for my research proposal on mechanism design for machine learning to understand the trade-off between statistical efficiency and incentive compatibility.

Advisors: Haifeng Xu

Committee Members: Yuxin Chen, Rad Niazadeh, and Haifeng Xu