— Ulle Endriss, ILLC, University of Amsterdam
In the week of 17-21 July 2023, a Summer School on Computational Social Choice took place the University of Amsterdam (https://events.illc.uva.nl/comsoc-school-2023/). Including lecturers and local organisers, the summer school attracted a total of 83 participants, most of them PhD students. The BNVKI was one of the sponsors of the event.
The scientific programme was organised around three short series of lectures by leading researchers in the field: Zoi Terzopoulou (Saint-Etienne) offered an introduction to axiomatic social choice, highlighting in particular the consequences of agents providing preference information that might be incomplete; Dominik Peters (Paris-Dauphine) reviewed a range of algorithmic problems one faces when trying to compute fair and economically efficient collective decisions; and Reshef Meir (Technion) discussed the challenges involved in understanding the behavioural aspects of collective decision making.
These core lectures were complemented by a number of one-off lectures on specific topics: by Britta Down (Tübingen) on the use of complexity theory in research on computational social choice; by Clemens Puppe (Karlsruhe) on social choice in the face of limited information; by Anaëlle Wilczynski (Paris-Saclay) on fairness and optimality in matching; by Vincent Conitzer (CMU and Oxford) on applying social choice theory to the design of moral AI systems; and by Piotr Faliszweski (AGH Kraków) on mapping out the space of possible preference profiles for an electorate in terms of features such as diversity and polarisation. All of the slide sets used during these lectures are available on the summer school website.
The scientific programme also included a session showcasing ongoing experimental work in the community, a poster session where participants had the opportunity to present their own work, and a rump session allowing anyone interested to give an impromptu talk of 5 minutes. Importantly, the overall setup allowed for plenty of time for discussion between participants and lecturers (most of which stayed for the full week). The social programme included a memorable trip on small boats through the canals of Amsterdam.
