July 14 at 11AM Eastern Time
Dynamic Competition Between Platforms
Abstract: The aim of this lecture is to take stock of recent work on the economics of competition between digital platforms and its dynamics, discussing the role of network effects and of switching costs. Focusing first on the strategy of firms, it will show how static models overestimate incumbency advantage and will explore the consequences of heterogeneity of consumers. Turning to the behavior of consumers, it will explore the difficulties that they face to coordinate on joint migration to a better platform.
Bio: Jacques Crémer received his PhD from MIT in 1977 and has held appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Tech University. Since 1991 he has been Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics, where he has held many administrative appointments, most recently being the first director of its Digital Centre. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the European Economic Association. He has done fundamental work on planning theory, auctions, incentive theory, organization economics, and more recently the digital economy. From April 2018 to March 2019, he was a Special Adviser to European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, and in that capacity co-authored the report “Competition Policy for the Digital Era.”
July 16 at 11AM Eastern Time
AI for Public Health and Conservation: Learning and Planning in the Data-to-Deployment Pipeline
Abstract: With the maturing of AI and multiagent systems research, we have a tremendous opportunity to direct these advances towards addressing complex societal problems. We focus on the problems of public health and wildlife conservation, and present research advances in multiagent systems to address one key cross-cutting challenge: how to effectively deploy our limited intervention resources in these problem domains. We present our deployments from around the world as well as lessons learned that we hope are of use to researchers who are interested in AI for Social Impact. Achieving social impact in these domains often requires methodological advances; we will highlight key research advances in topics such as computational game theory, multi-armed bandits and influence maximization in social networks for addressing challenges in public health and conservation. In pushing this research agenda, we believe AI can indeed play an important role in fighting social injustice and improving society.
Bio: Milind Tambe is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Director of Center for Research in Computation and Society at Harvard University; concurrently, he is also Director “AI for Social Good” at Google Research India. He is a recipient of the IJCAI John McCarthy Award, ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award from AAMAS, AAAI Robert S Engelmore Memorial Lecture award, INFORMS Wagner prize, Rist Prize of the Military Operations Research Society, the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award, AAMAS influential paper award, best paper awards at conferences including AAMAS, IJCAI, IVA. He has also received meritorious commendations and letters of appreciation from the US Coast Guard, Los Angeles Airport, and the US Federal Air Marshals Service. Prof. Tambe is a fellow of AAAI and ACM.