Research
With the advent of technology, progress in AI, IoT, and the penetration of the Internet, the world has become more decentralized and digital, though not entirely, to a great extent. In such a world, many decisions are taken based on different AI agents' interactions and behavior. If you want to make agents behave in a particular manner, you need to offer them incentives (this is incentive engineering). Incentive engineering is a powerful tool, in the form of game theory and mechanism design, applicable in many real-world applications, especially for modern web and AI applications.
For example, consider a big retailer is trying to deploy some AI agents who use data analytics/machine learning to estimate demands for various products it wishes to sell. Its competitor's AI agent can try to fool it so as it ends up procuring a large volume of a product that eventually it cannot sell in the retail market. That is where game theory comes into the picture. Another example, the government needs to aggregate citizens' preferences regarding which projects to be executed. We propose that the government leverage civic crowdfunding. However, strategic agents may free-ride, and the right incentive engineering is required.
My research is motivated by such real-world problems that need incentive engineering and machine learning. I am actively looking at blockchains and economics, as well as the privacy aspects of blockchains and distributed trust. Crowdsourcing, Internet Advertising, Online Discussion forums, cryptonomics, Online market places are few applications of my research theme.
The current research activities in my group fall under the following four projects
1. Melding Game Theory with Machine Learning
2. Strategy-proof Mechanism Design in Dynamic Environments
3. Next-Gen Blockchains and Applications
4. Information Aggregation over Block-chains
The following posters should provide you a high-level summary of my recent research activities.
1. MAGNETAR
2. Game Theory for Modern AI Applications
3. Are you game for game theory?
5. Distributing Trust via Blockchains (Next-Gen Blockchains)
6. Civic Crowdfunding (Esp over blockchains)
7. Fair e-Governance over Blockchains
For Thesises I supervised