July 27th, 2024

Agentic Markets 

@ ICML 2024

at Vienna, in-person, @agenticmarkets, Stolz 2

Recent developments in foundation models have paved the way for the wide adoption of AI agents that interact with humans and each other. The cooperation and safety of those models are a necessity, especially as they gain autonomy and participate in high stakes markets as autonomous systems, making those markets agentic. However, those agentic markets face significant challenges as most existing methods at improving their performance and robustness presume critical use of policy and regulation, which are insufficient and too slow for an economy driven by a mixture of human and algorithmic participants, especially in zero-shot scenarios. 

As we advance towards an AI-centric future, the emergence of markets, mechanisms, and mediation platforms dedicated to preference elicitation and resource allocation for those highly agentic systems is inevitable. We expect many existing multi-agent security and cooperation approaches to break in high-stakes situations where hyper-adversarial incentives are present. This is compounded by the emergence of complexity from AI interactions, exemplified by intricate interdependencies within agentic systems.


Given this complexity, how can we fully understand and assess the associated risks? How can we improve the performance and robustness of these markets? It is essential to draw lessons from traditional markets with less agentic AI (e.g., finance), to achieve robust incentives and economic security in a post-foundation model world. We recognize the need to incorporate principles of cryptography and robust market design. However, the sufficiency of these approaches is not certain. We aim to identify the missing elements and treat the study of market design in presence of agentic AI as a scientific discipline.


This workshop seeks to amalgamate insights from economics, mechanism design, game theory, and, crucially, real-world financial markets expertise for algorithmic agents to better prepare us for the inevitable mass adoption of agentic AI on mission critical jobs. We aspire for this workshop to enlighten participants about new agent-driven risks and opportunities, fostering disruptive collaborations among economists, market stakeholders, and AI researchers.


The goal of this workshop is to serve the focal point for a wide range of AI researchers and industry practitioners who have informed opinions on agentic systems. This interdisciplinary assembly is crucial for stimulating discussions that blend market design and economics with practical insights from the auctions and finance sector. We envision ICML as the perfect platform to nurture a scientific understanding of agentic markets. It is also the prime setting for enabling influential decision-makers and researchers to exchange knowledge and receive feedback, thereby facilitating impactful changes in the real world.

Speakers

Costis Daskalakis

MIT

Gabriele Farina

MIT

Sumitra Ganesh

JP Morgan

Ian Gemp

Google DeepMind

Gillian Hadfield

University of Toronto

Stefanos Leonardos

King's College London

Barnabe Monnot

Ethereum Foundation

Tuomas Sandholm

CMU

Nathan Worsley

Convexity

Lucas Baker

Jump Trading

Organizing COmmittee

Xyn Sun

Flashbots

Christian Schroeder de Witt

University of Oxford

Ani Calinescu

University of Oxford

Georgios Piliouras

Google DeepMind & SUTD

Thomas Thiery

Ethereum Foundation

Hawra Milani

The Code People

Klaudia Krawiecka

Meta

Dawn Song

University of California, Berkeley

Sponsors

Program Chair

Georgios Piliouras, Google DeepMind & SUTD

Senior Area Chair

Christian Schroeder de Witt, University of Oxford

Area Chair

Xyn Sun, Flashbots

Stefanos Leonardos, King's College London

Thomas Thiery, Ethereum Foundation

Maarten Peter Scholl, University of Oxford

Program Committee

Hao Zhou, University of Oxford

Maarten Peter Scholl, University of Oxford

Hawra Milani, Royal Holloway University of London

Hunar Batra, University of Oxford

Lars Lien Ankile, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Klaudia Krawiecka, Meta Platforms

John Lazarsfeld, Yale

Blas Kolic, IMDEA Networks

Constantin Venhoff, University of Oxford

Stefanos Leonardos, King's College London, University of London

Sumeet Ramesh Motwani, University of California, Berkeley

Rupali Bhati, Northeastern University

Ian Gemp, Google DeepMind

Ilayda Canyakmaz, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Aishwarya Majumder, Facebook

Lewis Hammond, University of Oxford

Swapneel S Mehta, New York University

Aymeric Vie, University of Oxford

Imran Mahmood Hashmi, University of Oxford

Igor Krawczuk, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne

Angira Sharma, University of Oxford

Uljad Berdica, University of Oxford

Stratis Skoulakis, EPFL - EPF Lausanne

Guohao Li, University of Oxford

Matt Stephenson, Columbia University

Esben Kran, Apart Research

Georgios Chionas, University of Liverpool

Joel Dyer, University of Oxford

Brandon Gary Kaplowitz, New York University

Iosif Sakos, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Ryann Sim, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Tianxin Ning, Facebook

Mallesh Pai, Rice University

Matt Stephenson, Pantera Capital

Carmine Ventre, King's College London, University of London

Andrew Miller, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Sarisht Wadhwa, Duke University

Agostino Capponi, Columbia University

Gerry Tsoukalas, Boston University

Lin William Cong, Cornell University

Jacob Leshno, University of Chicago

Fahad Saleh, University of Florida

Zhiguo He, Stanford University