Juan Carlos Perdomo

Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society

The many performances of performative prediction

January 25, 2023 - 12:00 PM Eastern Time

Location:

E100 Innovation Hall (viewing party)

Virtual Location:

Zoom

Talk Abstract:

When algorithmic predictions are used to inform social decision-making, these predictions don’t just forecast the world around it: they actively shape it. From online recommender platforms, to financial predictions, machine learning systems are in active feedback with the surrounding environment and have the ability to steer the underlying data distributions towards different targets. While traditionally neglected, these causal forces of prediction have been recently formalized in a new risk minimization framework called performative prediction [PZMH20].

Following a brief overview of the performative prediction framework, in this talk, I will present some work which directly tries to address the distinction between forecasting future outcomes, and steering data distributions towards socially desirable targets. Building upon a new line of research in supervised learning [GKRSW21, GHKRW22], we introduce the idea of performative omnipredictors. These are simple predictive models that simultaneously encode the optimal decision rule with respect to many possibly-competing objectives. As part of our presentation, we will discuss some connections with the outcome indistinguishability literature [DKRRY21] and illustrate how the solution concepts we introduce enable decision-makers to flexibly decide on the goals of prediction in performative settings.

Speaker Bio:

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society hosted by Cynthia Dwork. I finished my PhD in EECS at the University of California, Berkeley where I was co-advised by Peter Bartlett and Moritz Hardt.

My research centers on the foundations of machine learning and its uses in social decision-making.

I am from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Before becoming interested in research, I was part of the Puerto Rican national team in sailing. I won the island's first gold medal at the 2013 Youth World Championships and represented Puerto Rico at the 2015 Pan American Games. Also, I was fortunate to be a part of Emirates Team New Zealand's winning campaign for the 35th America's Cup.

Contact: jcperdomo at g dot harvard dot edu