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

Jeannette M. Wing
Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute
Professor of Computer Science

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.

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).

Webinar option is available. Register in advance at
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