Computational Democracy Research Seminar - Dr. Pradeep Murukannaiah, University of Delft

Title: Value-Sensitive Decision Making in Democratic Systems

Abstract:

Consider a decision context in which a small subset of alternatives is to be chosen among a large set of alternatives. In such a context, it is typical to elicit and aggregate the stakeholders’ preferences on the alternatives to assist decision making. This approach offers insights on what stakeholders prefer, but not why. In this talk, I argue that the exploration of values underlying preferences is a means to answer the why question. I briefly describe the theory of values, how values can be elicited/estimated from stakeholders, and importantly, how the elicited values can be used in decision making. Finally, I describe the challenges in realizing such a value-sensitive decision-making process, e.g., the appropriate level of abstraction at which to conceptualize values, and avenues for future work.