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Columbia Data Science Institute

Data for Good (or Scary AI and Other Dangers of Big Data)

OPEN TO ALL

RSVP HERE

 

Friday, September 14, 2018
Location: Pupin 428
1:00PM – 2:30PM

Abstract: In our data-rich world, we in the technology community have a responsibility to ensure that we use data for good. In this talk, under the acronym FATES, I will focus on these aspects of the responsible use of data: fairness, accountability, transparency, ethics, safety and security. I will give examples of how data-hungry AI-based systems can lead to harmful decisions and even fatal errors. But I will also give examples of new techniques we can use to reduce some of these bad effects. Above all, we need to work with ethicists, social scientists, and humanists to build systems with FATES in mind as we design our technology not after we deploy it.

 

Bio: Biography: Jeannette M. Wing is Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute and Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. From 2013 to 2017, she was a Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research. She is Consulting Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon where she twice served as the Head of the Computer Science Department and had been on the faculty since 1985. From 2007-2010 she was the Assistant Director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. She received her S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Wing’s general research interests are in the areas of trustworthy computing, specification and verification, concurrent and distributed systems, programming languages, and software engineering. Her current interests are in the foundations of security and privacy, with a new focus on trustworthy AI. She was or is on the editorial board of twelve journals, including the Journal of the ACM and Communications of the ACM.

She is currently a member of: the National Library of Medicine Blue Ribbon Panel, the Science, Engineering, and Technology Advisory Committee for the American Academy for Arts and Sciences; the Board of Trustees for the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics; the Advisory Board for the Association for Women in Mathematics; and the Alibaba DAMO Technical Advisory Board. She has been chair and/or a member of many other academic, government, and industry advisory boards. She received the CRA Distinguished Service Award in 2011 and the ACM Distinguished Service Award in 2014. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).