Project description
Advancing decision support with counterfactual reasoning
Humans excel at counterfactual reasoning, imagining alternative pasts to evaluate what could have been better or worse. This ability plays a key role in learning from limited experiences and improving decision-making. However, despite the growing role of machine learning in decision support across fields like medicine and education, most algorithms have struggled to incorporate this type of reasoning. With this in mind, the ERC-funded COUNTERFACT project aims to bridge this gap by developing machine learning models capable of performing counterfactual reasoning. These models will enhance decision support systems, improve human decision-making, and reduce computational and data demands, all while helping individuals learn from past choices to achieve better outcomes.
Objective
Reasoning about what might have been, about alternatives to our own pasts, is a landmark of human intelligence. Such type of reasoning, called counterfactual reasoning, is often evaluative, specifying alternatives that are in some sense better or worse than our past reality, and has been shown to play a significant role in the ability that humans have to learn from limited past experience and improve their decision making skills over time.
In recent years, there has been an increasing excitement on the potential of machine learning models and algorithms to support human decision making in a variety of high-stakes domains such as medicine, education or science. However, these models and algorithms have been traditionally unable to perform, nor benefit from, counterfactual reasoning. In this project, our goal is to bridge this gap.
We will develop machine learning models and algorithms for automated decision support that are able to perform and benefit from counterfactual reasoning in multiple ways. For example, they will perform counterfactual reasoning about human behavior to anticipate how humans incorporate algorithmic advice into their decisions. This will enable a new generation of decision support systems that can only increase and never decrease the average quality of human decisions. Moreover, they will use the structural similarities and shared properties across different counterfactual decision making scenarios to significantly reduce their computational and data requirements. In addition, these models and algorithms will also help humans learn from their own past decisions by identifying alternative decisions that would have led to better outcomes. Finally, we will perform large-scale human subject studies with both laypersons and experts to evaluate their effectiveness in a wide variety of decision making tasks.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
80539 MUNCHEN
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.