PSOwp: Particle Swarm Optimisation Without Panopticon to Evaluate Private Social Choice

Abstract

AbstractIn a recent paper we introduced differentially private random dictatorship as a private mechanism for social choice. Differentially private mechanisms are evaluated in terms of their utility and information loss. In the area of social choice it is not so straightforward to evaluate the utility of a mechanism. It is therefore difficult to evaluate a differentially private social choice mechanism. In this paper we propose to use a particle swarm optimization-like problem to evaluate our differentially private social choice method. Standard particle swarm optimization (PSO) can be seen in terms of a panopticon structure. That is, a structure in which there is a central entity that knows all of all. In PSO, there is a particle or agent that knows the best position achieved by any of the particles or agents. We propose here PSO without panopticon as a way to avoid an omniscient agent in the PSO system.Then, we compare different social choice mechanisms for this PSO without panopticon, and we show that differentially private random dictatorship leads to good results.