Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Influence Maximization: Raising Awareness about HIV among Homeless Youth

Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Influence Maximization: Raising Awareness about HIV among Homeless Youth

Amulya Yadav, Bryan Wilder, Eric Rice, Robin Petering, Jaih Craddock, Amanda Yoshioka-Maxwell, Mary Hemler, Laura Onasch-Vera, Milind Tambe, Darlene Woo

Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Best Sister Conferences. Pages 5399-5403. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2018/761

This paper reports on results obtained by deploying HEALER and DOSIM (two AI agents for social influence maximization) in the real-world, which assist service providers in maximizing HIV awareness in real-world homeless-youth social networks. These agents recommend key "seed" nodes in social networks, i.e., homeless youth who would maximize HIV awareness in their real-world social network. While prior research on these agents published promising simulation results from the lab, the usability of these AI agents in the real-world was unknown. This paper presents results from three real-world pilot studies involving 173 homeless youth across two different homeless shelters in Los Angeles. The results from these pilot studies illustrate that HEALER and DOSIM outperform the current modus operandi of service providers by ~160% in terms of information spread about HIV among homeless youth.
Keywords:
Planning and Scheduling: Applications of Planning
Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications: Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications
Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications: Computational Sustainability
Planning and Scheduling: Planning under Uncertainty