UNKNOWING MORE--THE DOWNSIDE OF INFORMATION IN MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS

DAVID SARNE (Bar-Ilan University)

In many multi-agent systems, we find information brokers or information
technologies aiming to provide the agents with more information or
reduce the cost of acquiring new information. In this talki, I will 
show that better information can hurt: the presence of an information
provider, even if the use of her services is optional, can degrade
both individual agents' utilities and overall social welfare. The talk
will focus on two specific domains: auctions (where the provided
information relates to the common value of the auctioned item) and
cooperative information gathering (where costly information is shared
between the agents). For the first, I will show that, with the
information provider in the market, in conflict with classic auction
theory, the auctioneer may prefer to limit the number of bidders that
participate in the auction and similarly bidders may prefer to have
greater competition. Also, bidders' unawareness of the auctioneer's
option to purchase the information does not necessarily play into the
hands of the auctioneer and, similarly, bidders may sometimes benefit
from not knowing that the auctioneer has the option to purchase such
information. For cooperative information gathering, I will present three
methods for improving overall and individual performance, all based on
limiting and constraining information sharing. Along the talk, we will
also answer questions such as: why bars use dim lights and loud music;
ways that charities could benefit from group buying; and why it makes
sense to pay someone to over-price information she wants to sell you.

BIO

David Sarne is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science
at Bar-Ilan University. He is also the head of the Intelligent
Information Agents (IIA) group. He joined Bar-Ilan in October 2007;
before this, he was a Post-Doc at Harvard University for two years,
following several years in the Israeli high-tech industry. He holds a
B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and an M.Sc. in Information Systems
(both from Tel-Aviv University) and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from
Bar-Ilan University.