Here's a podcast with Nicole Immorlica, in which she talks about her research origins (including a course and a poem), what computer science brings to economics, and the role of theory in the age of generative AI.
Ideas: Economics and computation with Nicole Immorlica
When research manager Nicole Immorlica discovered she could use math to make the world a better place for people, she was all in. She discusses working in computer science theory and economics, including studying the impact of algorithms and AI on markets.
Behind every emerging technology is a great idea propelling it forward. In the Microsoft Research Podcast series Ideas, members of the research community at Microsoft discuss the beliefs that animate their research, the experiences and thinkers that inform it, and the positive human impact it targets.
In this episode, host Gretchen Huizinga talks with Senior Principal Research Manager Nicole Immorlica. As Immorlica describes it, when she and others decided to take a computational approach to pushing the boundaries of economic theory, there weren’t many computer scientists doing research in economics. Since then, contributions such as applying approximation algorithms to the classic economic challenge of pricing and work on the stable marriage problem have earned Immorlica numerous honors, including the 2023 Test of Time Award from the ACM Special Interest Group on Economics and Computation and selection as a 2023 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow. Immorlica traces the journey back to a graduate market design course and a realization that captivated her: she could use her love of math to help improve the world through systems that empower individuals to make the best decisions possible for themselves.
Learn more:
- Impact of Decentralized Learning on Player Utilities in Stackelberg Games
Publication, June 2024 - The Disparate Effects of Strategic Manipulation
Publication, January 2019 - Marriage, honesty, and stability
Publication, January 2005 - AI, Cognition, and the Economy (AICE)
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