Davide Grossi

Davide Grossi Associate Professor (senior lecturer) at the Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

Title: Stable Opinions in Iterated Aggregation on Networks: Theory and an Application to Liquid Democracy

Abstract: I will outline an analysis of liquid democracy (or delegable proxy voting) from the perspective of binary aggregation and of binary diffusion models. I will show how proxy voting can be embedded into the framework of binary aggregation with abstentions, allowing known results about the latter to apply to the former. I will then turn to an analysis of Boolean DeGroot processes, a special case of the DeGroot stochastic model of opinion diffusion, where each agent holds binary opinions and has a unique influencer. I will establish the convergence conditions of such opinion dynamics, which in turn sheds novel light on the analysis of delegable proxy. The study is a first attempt to provide theoretical foundations to liquid democracy. Our analysis also leads to recommendations on how to modify the system in order to make it better behaved with respect to the handling of delega- tion cycles and of inconsistent majorities. 

Biography: Davide Grossi is senior lecturer at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Liverpool, UK. He graduated cum laude in Philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (Italy) and obtained a PhD in Computer Science from Utrecht University (the Netherlands). His research focuses on the theoretical foundations of Artificial Intelligence. He is author of over 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals, conferences and workshops in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Multiagent Systems, Logic and Philosophy.