[agents] PhD studentship for UK student (4 years fully funded): Socially Responsible Norm Emergence

[Griffiths, Nathan]

PhD studentship for UK student (4 years fully funded): Socially Responsible Norm Emergence

Supervisor: Prof. Nathan Griffiths, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick.

Start: Sept/Oct 2018

We are seeking a PhD student for a project investigating the human-facing aspects of artificial intelligence (AI). The overall aim is to use agent-based modelling to develop mechanisms for norm emergence and behaviour change, to encourage desirable behaviours (e.g. using active travel instead of driving). Typically, norm emergence is facilitated through incentivisation mechanisms in the form of recommendations, rewards, or punishments. However, existing AI-based approaches do not consider the social effects of such interventions. Similarly, the resulting mechanisms and machine learning models are typically opaque and not human-readable. Moreover, even in cases where they are human readable, there is typically no attempt to present the process to users in a transparent manner, or to engender trust and demonstrate fairness. A secondary aim of this project is to incorporate social goals into the norm emergence process (e.g. to encourage fairness) and to develop human-facing explanations.

The core aims of the project are as follows.

1. Norm emergence and behaviour change - encouraging desirable behaviours.
2. Socially responsible recommendation systems - incorporating social goals intro recommender systems.
3. Explanation, trust and transparency of machine learning - developing trustworthy ML with human-facing explanations.

Candidates should ideally have a computer science or data science background, although candidates from other scientific disciplines will be considered. Candidates should have strong analytical skills, and should have experience in programming with Python, or show an aptitude for programming agent-based models. Due to the way the project is funded this is only available for UK students.

For further details please contact Prof. Nathan Griffiths - Nathan.Griffiths at warwick.ac.uk<mailto:Nathan.Griffiths at warwick.ac.uk>

Regards,
Nathan

—
Nathan Griffiths
Professor in Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
http://go.warwick.ac.uk/nathangriffiths

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