Judgement aggregation in scientific collaborations: The case for waiving expertise

The fragmentation of academic disciplines forces individuals to specialise. In doing so, they become experts over their narrow area of research. However, ambitious scientific projects, such as the search for gravitational waves, require them to come together and collaborate across disciplinary borders. How should scientists with expertise in different disciplines treat each others’ expert claims? An intuitive answer is that the collaboration should defer to the opinions of experts. In this paper we show that under certain seemingly innocuous assumptions, this intuitive answer gives rise to an impossibility result when it comes to aggregating the beliefs of experts to deliver the beliefs of a collaboration as a whole. We then argue that when experts’ beliefs come into conflict, they should waive their expert status

Predictable Artificial Intelligence

We introduce the fundamental ideas and challenges of Predictable AI, a nascent research area that explores the ways in which we can anticipate key indicators of present and future AI ecosystems. We argue that achieving predictability is crucial for fostering trust, liability, control, alignment and safety of AI ecosystems, and thus should be prioritised over performance. While distinctive from other areas of technical and non-technical AI research, the questions, hypotheses and challenges relevant to Predictable AI were yet to be clearly described. This paper aims to elucidate them, calls for identifying paths towards AI predictability and outlines the potential impact of this emergent field.Comment: 11 pages excluding references, 4 figures, and 2 tables. Paper Under Revie

The Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration: History, Philosophy, and Culture

This white paper outlines the plans of the History Philosophy Culture Working Group of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur

Key Science Goals for the Next-Generation Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has led to the first images of a supermassive black hole, revealing the central compact objects in the elliptical galaxy M87 and the Milky Way. Proposed upgrades to this array through the next-generation EHT (ngEHT) program would sharply improve the angular resolution, dynamic range, and temporal coverage of the existing EHT observations. These improvements will uniquely enable a wealth of transformative new discoveries related to black hole science, extending from event-horizon-scale studies of strong gravity to studies of explosive transients to the cosmological growth and influence of supermassive black holes. Here, we present the key science goals for the ngEHT and their associated instrument requirements, both of which have been formulated through a multi-year international effort involving hundreds of scientists worldwide

The Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration: History, Philosophy, and Culture

This white paper outlines the plans of the History Philosophy Culture Working Group of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

Pre-screening workers to overcome bias amplification in online labour markets

Groups have access to more diverse information and typically outperform individuals on problem solving tasks. Crowdsolving utilises this principle to generate novel and/or superior solutions to intellective tasks by pooling the inputs from a distributed online crowd. However, it is unclear whether this particular instance of “wisdom of the crowd” can overcome the influence of potent cognitive biases that habitually lead individuals to commit reasoning errors. We empirically test the prevalence of cognitive bias on a popular crowdsourcing platform, examining susceptibility to bias of online panels at the individual and aggregate levels. We then investigate the use of the Cognitive Reflection Test, notable for its predictive validity for both susceptibility to cognitive biases in test settings and real-life reasoning, as a screening tool to improve collective performance. We find that systematic biases in crowdsourced answers are not as prevalent as anticipated, but when they occur, biases are amplified with increasing group size, as predicted by the Condorcet Jury Theorem. The results further suggest that pre-screening individuals with the Cognitive Reflection Test can substantially enhance collective judgement and improve crowdsolving performance

Besov-Schatten Spaces

We introduce the Besov-Schatten spaces (ℓ2), a matrix version af analytic Besov space, and we compute the dual of this space showing that it coincides with the matricial Bloch space introduced previously in Popa (2007). Finally we compute the space of all Schur multipliers on 1(ℓ2)

The Meter-ON Project: How to Support the Deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructures in Europe?

none7Marcoci A.; Raffaelli S.; Galan Sanjuan J.M.; Cagno E.; Micheli G.J.L.; Mauri G.; Urban R.Marcoci, A.; Raffaelli, S.; Galan Sanjuan, J. M.; Cagno, Enrico; Micheli, GUIDO JACOPO LUCA; Mauri, G.; Urban, R

Multiple sclerosis in the Republic of Moldova: a descriptive study of prevalence and evolution of clinical manifestations

Introduction. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, which can lead to standing disability in young adults. Investigation of MS epidemiology in the Republic of Moldova shows interest, taking into account the fact that the natural evolution of the disease is still not affected by use of the disease modifying drugs. Material and methods. The study included patients diagnosed with MS according to the McDonald criteria 2010, clinical and imagistic defined forms. Epidemiological sources were collected from records of family doctors from different regions of the country, neurologists form district, municipal and city hospitals, investigations archives of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of republican diagnostic centers, administrative records (centralized). Collection of cases included: questionnaire of patient assessment with inclusion of demographic and clinical data. Results. 747 MS patients were living in the study area, on the prevalence day, 31 December 2012. A crude prevalence was 21.0 per 100.000 inhabitants (95% CI: 14.8–27.1). From 724 prevalent cases, 460 (63.5%) were females with a mean age of 42.1±11.9 years and 264 (36.5%) were males, mean age of 40. 8±12.8 years. The highest estimates were observed in the age group 40-49, for women, 57.0 per 100.000 inhabitants and, for men, 29.0 per 100.000 inhabitants. The distribution of 721 prevalent cases by administrative areas in the Republic of Moldova was the following: Center – 32%, Chisinau – 13.9%, North – 33.8%, South – 11.1%, Transnistria – 2.1% and UTA Gagauzia – 7.1%. Conclusion. The estimated prevalence of multiple sclerosis in the Republic of Moldova was 21.0 per 100.000 inhabitants. This proved to be lower than in European countries. Also the patient’s neglect of the first appeared signs and symptoms lead to a late addressing to the neurologist doctor. On the other hand, when the patient addresses in time to a doctor, the reason why MS is not detected would be underestimating the diagnosis, which in some cases is established with delay and in the other cases it is not set at all