[Colloq] REMINDER - Thesis Proposal - Crowdsourcing Formal Decision Making Using Generalized Semantic Games - Ahmed Abdelmeged - May 21st, 3:00pm, 366

[Jessica Biron]

PhD Thesis Proposal 

Ahmed Abdelmeged 

Date: Tuesday May 21, 2013 
Time: 3:00 pm 
Location: 366 WVH 

Title: Crowdsourcing Formal Decision Making Using Generalized Semantic Games 

We are after a Wikipedia for formal scientific knowledge; a crowdsourcing system where the crowd takes positions on interpreted predicate logic statements (a.k.a. claims) and objectively argues the positions through Semantic Games (SGs). SGs are zero-sum, two-person games where players take two contradictory positions on claims and exchange examples and counter-examples to support their positions and dispute their opponent's positions. 

SGs provide an attractive basis for solving some key challenges that face crowdsourcing systems. More concretely, 1) the challenge of defining user contributions is to some extent solved by SGs because SG players interact through a formal well-defined protocol. However, an SG is a binary interaction mechanism that needs to be scaled to the crowd. 2) SGs provide a basis for solving the challenges of evaluating users and their contributions because, under certain restrictions, SG winners are more likely to be stronger than their opponents, and the contributions of SG winners are more likely to be true than the contributions of their opponents. However, the system either has to guarantee those restrictions or somehow compensate for their absence. 3) SGs are fun to play, again under certain restrictions, and thus help address the user retention challenge. However, the challenge of combining user contributions is not addressed by SGs. The system should combine the results of several SGs to better evaluate users and their contributions. 

Our proposed system can be applied to crowdsource the building of a formal scientific knowledge base, the development of algorithms for solving formally-specified computational problems as well as to educate and evaluate students online. 

Committee: 
Karl Lieberherr (Advisor) 
Amy Sliva 
Yizhou Sun 
Christo Wilson 
Thomas Wahl 
Casper Harteveld, Professor of Game Design, NEU (external member)