PIMS lectures
Title: TBA
Speaker: Paul Dourish, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine
Date and time:
22 Mar 2023,
4:30pm -
5:30pm
Location: Bob Wright Centre A104
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Title: PIMS Seminar Series on Mathematics of Ethical Decision-making Systems: Shifts in Distributions and Preferences in Response to Learning
Speaker: Jamie Morgenstern, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington
Date and time:
03 Nov 2022,
3:30pm -
5:00pm
Location: ECS 660
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Talk is at 3:30 pm.
Reception is at 4:30 pm.
Download poster (PDF).
Abstract: Prediction systems face exogenous and endogenous distribution shift -- the world constantly changes, and the predictions the system makes change the environment in which it operates. For example, a music recommender observes exogeneous changes in the user distribution as different communities have increased access to high speed internet. If users under the age of 18 enjoy their recommendations, the proportion of the user base comprised of those under 18 may endogeneously increase. Most of the study of endogenous shifts has focused on the single decision-maker setting, where there is one learner that users either choose to use or not. In this talk, I'll describe several settings where user preferences may cause changes in distributions over the life of an ML system, and how these changes will affect the long-term performance of such systems. Joint work with Sarah Dean, Mihaela Curmei, Maryam Fazhel and Lillian Ratliff.
Bio: Jamie Morgenstern is an assistant professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. She was previously an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. Prior to starting as faculty, she was fortunate to be hosted by Michael Kearns, Aaron Roth, and Rakesh Vohra as a Warren Center fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her PhD working with Avrim Blum at Carnegie Mellon University. She studies the social impact of machine learning and the impact of social behavior on ML's guarantees. How should machine learning be made robust to behavior of the people generating training or test data for it? How should ensure that the models we design do not exacerbate inequalities already present in society?
For those unable to attend this talk in person, we have a Zoom alternative. For the Zoom meeting ID/Passcode, please send
an email to pims@uvic.ca. Thank you
Title: Networks of Classifiers and Classifiers with Feedback - Fairness and Equilibria
Speaker: Sampath Kannan, University of Pennsylvania
Date and time:
06 Oct 2022,
3:30pm -
5:30pm
Location: ECS 660
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Join us for this talk in the Seminar Series: Mathematics of Ethical Decision-making Systems
Talk at 3:30 PM
Reception at 4:30 PM
Fairness in machine learning classification has been a topic of great interest given the
increasing use of such classifiers in critical settings.
There are many possible definitions of fairness and many potential sources of unfairness.
Given this complex landscape, most research has focused on studying single classifiers in
isolation.
In reality an individual is subjected to a network of classifiers: for example, one is
classified at each stage of life (school, college, employment to name a few), and one may
also be classified in parallel by many classifiers (such as when seeking college admissions).
In addition, individuals may modify their behavior based on their knowledge of the
classifier, leading to equilibrium phenomena. Another feedback effect is that the result of
the classifier may affect the features of an individual (or of the next generation) for future
classifications.
In this talk we present work that takes the first steps in exploring questions of fairness in
networks of classifiers and in systems with feedback. Given the inherent complexity of the
analysis, our models are very stylized, but it is our belief that some of the qualitative
conclusions apply to real-world situations.
***For those unable to attend this talk in person, we have a Zoom alternative. For the Zoom meeting ID/Passcode, please send
an email to pims@uvic.ca. Thank you ***
Download Poster (PDF)
Title: Statistical Estimation with Differential Privacy
Speaker: Gautam Kamath, Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo
Date and time:
25 Aug 2022,
3:30pm -
4:30pm
Location: Bob Wright Centre A104
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Download poster PDF
Naively implemented, statistical procedures are prone to leaking
information about their training data, which can be problematic
if the data is sensitive. Differential privacy, a rigorous notion of
data privacy, offers a principled framework to dealing with these
issues. I will survey recent results in differential private statistical
estimation, presenting a few vignettes which highlight novel
challenges for even the most fundamental problems, and
suggesting solutions to address them. Along the way, I’ll
mention connections to tools and techniques in a number of
fields, including information theory and robust statistics.