https://mit.zoom.us/j/92075881660?pwd=bnNud0lHUWRTYS83d3lTOWIzVnVwQT09
Passcode: 081943
MIT-Harvard CINCS (Communications Information Networks Circuits and Signals) / Hamilton Institute Seminar
Speaker: Dr Nadia Fawaz, Pinterest
Title: "Inclusive Search and Recommendations"
Abstract: Machine learning powers many advanced search and recommendation systems, and user experience strongly depends on how well ML systems perform across all data segments. This performance can be impacted by biases, which can lead to a subpar experience for subsets of users, content providers, or applications. Biases may arise at different stages in machine learning systems, from existing societal biases in the data, to biases introduced by the data collection or modeling processes. These biases may impact the performance of various components of ML systems, from offline training, to evaluation and online serving in production systems. Specific techniques have been developed to help reduce bias at each stage of an ML system. We will describe sources of bias in ML technology, why addressing bias matters, and techniques to mitigate bias, with examples from our Inclusive AI work at Pinterest for search and recommendations. Mitigating bias in machine learning systems is crucial to successfully achieve our mission to "bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love".
Bio: Nadia Fawaz is an applied research scientist and the tech lead for Inclusive AI at Pinterest. Her research and engineering interests include machine learning for personalization, AI fairness and data privacy. Her work leverages techniques from AI including deep learning, information theory, fairness and privacy theory, and aims at bridging theory and practice. She was named one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2021. She was a winner of the ACM RecSyS challenge on Context-Aware Movie Recommendations CAMRa2011, her 2012 UAI paper "Guess Who Rated This Movie: Identifying Users Through Subspace Clustering" was featured in an MIT TechReview article as “The Ultimate Challenge For Recommendation Engines”, and her work on inclusive AI was featured in many press outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Vogue Business. Earlier, she was a Staff Software Engineer in Machine Learning and the tech lead for the job recommendations team at LinkedIn, a principal research scientist at Technicolor Research lab, Palo Alto, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Research Laboratory of Electronics. She received her Ph.D. in EECS in 2008 and her Diplome d'ingenieur (M.Sc.) in EECS in 2005 both from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications de Paris and EURECOM, France. She is a member of the IEEE and of the ACM.