Estimating Value Preferences in a Hybrid Participatory System

Abstract

We propose methods for an AI agent to estimate the value preferences of individuals in a hybrid participatory system, considering a setting where participants make choices and provide textual motivations for those choices. We focus on situations where there is a conflict between participants' choices and motivations, and operationalize the philosophical stance that 'valuing is deliberatively consequential.' That is, if a user's choice is based on a deliberation of value preferences, the value preferences can be observed in the motivation the user provides for the choice. Thus, we prioritize the value preferences estimated from motivations over the value preferences estimated from choices alone. We evaluate the proposed methods on a dataset of a large-scale survey on energy transition. The results show that explicitly addressing inconsistencies between choices and motivations improves the estimation of an individual's value preferences. The proposed methods can be integrated in a hybrid participatory system, where artificial agents ought to estimate humans' value preferences to pursue value alignment.