Keynote Speakers
The Computer in the Sky
Tim Roughgarden, Columbia University and a16z crypto
Tuesday June 25, 2024, 11:15am
Turing-complete blockchain protocols approximate the idealized abstraction of a "computer in the sky" that is open access, runs in plain view, and, in effect, has no owner or operator. This technology can, among other things, enable stronger notions of ownership of digital possessions than we have ever had before. Building the computer in the sky is hard (and scientifically fascinating). In this talk I'll highlight some of my recent research on this challenge, emphasizing the diversity of mathematical tools required, the immediate practical impact that mathematical work on this topic has had, and some open problems of interest to theoretical computer scientists.
Scaling up Deep Learning
Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI
Wednesday June 26, 2024, 11:15am
Deep learning, powered by increasing amounts of compute, has been advancing the boundary of what machines can do in practice. In this talk, I will discuss my journey from studying fast theoretical algorithms to building large-scale deep learning systems.
Algorithmic Contract Design
Michal Feldman, Tel Aviv University
Thursday June 27, 2024, 11:15am
Algorithmic contract design is a new frontier at the interface of economics and computation, studying scenarios where a principal delegates the execution of a costly project to an agent or a team of agents, and incentivizes them through a contract that specifies payments contingent on the project's success. This domain has gained increasing interest from the theoretical computer science community, particularly in the realm of combinatorial contracts. In this talk, I will survey two distinct models of combinatorial contracts, each illustrating unique sources of complexity encountered in contract design. The first model allows an agent to select from a set of possible actions, examining the intricate dependencies among these actions. The second model involves motivating a team of agents, focusing on the interdependencies within various agent combinations. I will present both (approximation) algorithms and hardness results concerning the optimal contract problem in these settings. The talk is based on joint work with Paul Duetting, Tomer Ezra, Yoav Gal-Tzur, Thomas Kesselheim and Maya Schlesinger.