“Physics of Data, Digital Transition & Society" seminar series

Speaker: Nello Cristianini, Bristol University

Date: Friday 5 November. Time 2.30. PM

Where: Aula Rostagni, Physics and Astronomy Dept.

Title: The Interface between Artificial Intelligence and the Social Sciences - and Why it Matters

ABSTRACT:   The 'secret sauce' that made AI successful contains an important ingredient: vast samples of human behavior. From those, machine learning algorithms can extract the statistical rules that guide their own behavior: rules for recommendations, translations, image analysis, and more. Recently there have been concerns about subtle biases that might be found in AI agents, and some may be tracked just to the data that was used to train them, as well as to the fact that these agents are 'unreadable' to humans. Understanding the biases that are found in media content is important, as this is often what is used to teach machines to understand language. More generally, we need to understand the interface between AI and society if we want to live safely with intelligent machines. 

BIO:  Nello Cristianini is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bristol. His research covers machine learning methods, and applications of AI to the analysis of media content, as well as the social and ethical implications of AI. Cristianini is the co-author of two widely known books in machine learning, as well as a book in bioinformatics. He is a recipient of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, and of a European Research Council Advanced Grant. Before joining the University of Bristol, he has been a professor of statistics at the University of California, Davis. Currently he is working on social and ethical implications of AI. His animated videos dealing with the social aspects of AI can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/seeapattern