Fair Scheduling and Resource Allocation for Public Service

The USC Center for AI in Society welcomes Shubham Singh, PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Illinois, for a seminar presentation on the efficient and equitable distribution of public resources — such as health inspectors, mail delivery, and street sweeping — that are crucial for local governments. However, disruptions to these allocation processes often reflect deep-seated historical and social inequalities, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. In this talk, Singh examines how single-objective predictive models can exacerbate societal disparities, how different choices of efficiency and fairness objectives lead to divergent outcomes under the same allocation policy, and the limitations of ranking methods in achieving an optimal utility-fairness tradeoff.

This program is open to all eligible individuals. The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the University’s Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.