Mar 22 • 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Seminar on Leadership, Research, and Innovation

“Creating Unbiased Algorithms in a Biased World,” March 22, 2018
Tina Eliassi-Rad, Associate Professor of Computer Science
Artificial intelligence systems are meant to transcend some of the imperfections of the human mind, being grounded in mathematics and operating on data rather than emotion or subjective perception. But as more algorithms are weaved into daily life, the limits of their objectivity are being revealed. Take Google’s speech recognition algorithm, which is trained by listening to audio data and learning patterns. Research has shown that it has a gender bias—it performs better with male voices than female voices. This isn’t because Google’s algorithm is sexist, but because it was trained on unbalanced data with disproportionately more male voices, according to Professor Eliassi-Rad. Eliassi-Rad, whose research is rooted in data mining and machine learning, is interested in exploring how to create fair artificial intelligence systems in an unjust world.

DINNER AND DISCUSSION RSVP, March 22, 7 PM