In plain words: A model of people who can spend effort to change how an algorithm scores them, working out when they can be pushed to genuinely improve rather than trick the system. Whenever any sensible scoring rule can do that, a simple straight-line rule works too.
Abstract · How Do Classifiers Induce Agents To Invest Effort Strategically?
Algorithms are often used to produce decision-making rules that classify or evaluate individuals. When these individuals have incentives to be classified a certain way, they may behave strategically to influence their outcomes. We develop a model for how strategic agents can invest effort in order to change the outcomes they receive, and we give a tight characterization of when such agents can be incentivized to invest specified forms of effort into improving their outcomes as opposed to "gaming" the classifier. We show that whenever any "reasonable" mechanism can do so, a simple linear mechanism suffices.
Jon Kleinberg, Manish Raghavan
arXiv:1807.05307 · cs.LG, cs.CY, cs.DS, cs.GT, stat.ML · submitted Jul 13, 2018 · updated Aug 1, 2019
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