Information Acquisition Under Resource Limitations in a Noisy Environment

Authors

  • Matvey Soloviev Cornell University
  • Joseph Halpern Cornell University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v32i1.12122

Keywords:

rationality, inattention, noisy observations

Abstract

We introduce a theoretical model of information acquisition under resource limitations in a noisy environment. An agent must guess the truth value of a given Boolean formula φ after performing a bounded number of noisy tests of the truth values of variables in the formula. We observe that, in general, the problem of finding an optimal testing strategy for φ is hard, but we suggest a useful heuristic. The techniques we use also give insight into two apparently unrelated, but well-studied problems: (1) rational inattention (the optimal strategy may involve hardly ever testing variables that are clearly relevant to φ) and (2) what makes a formula hard to learn/remember.

Downloads

Published

2018-04-26

How to Cite

Soloviev, M., & Halpern, J. (2018). Information Acquisition Under Resource Limitations in a Noisy Environment. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 32(1). https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v32i1.12122

Issue

Section

AAAI Technical Track: Reasoning under Uncertainty