[Air-L] Live stream MONDAY: Timnit Gebru: Computer Vision -- Who Is Helped And Who Is Harmed? (4pm ET on Zoom)

[Christian Sandvig]

It seems like this might be of interest to this list? Christian


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Christian Sandvig <csandvig at umich.edu>
Date: Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 10:16 PM
Subject: MONDAY: Timnit Gebru: Computer Vision -- Who Is Helped And Who Is
Harmed? (4pm ET on Zoom)
To:



Dear Ethics and AI Enthusiasts,

Welcome to the new year! I'm writing with the exciting news that ESC will
launch the semester with a talk by Dr. Timnit Gebru.

Even if you have already seen announcements of this event, I want to
reiterate its significance. In the domain of computing and ethics, Dr.
Gebru is one of the most sought after speakers available. Dr. Gebru is a
leading and widely-respected researcher in the domain of AI ethics. In
addition, Dr. Gebru was recently dismissed from Google after what the MIT
Technology Review described as "a protracted disagreement over a research
paper...[which] detailed the risks of large AI language models." This has
received such widespread attention, last month it led members of Congress
to call for a federal investigation.

Monday's talk promises to tackle the proposed use of computer vision for
such shocking applications as the alleged ability to use your image to
identify your sexual orientation, your "propensity to violence," and
others. I hope you will join us. All are welcome -- please feel free to
forward this e-mail as appropriate.

Christian


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Timnit Gebru: Computer Vision – Who is helped and who is harmed?
January 25, 2021 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Times are shown in Eastern Time

JOIN VIA ZOOM
https://umich.zoom.us/j/92549579663

TIMNIT GEBRU
Computer Scientist, former Co-Lead Ethical AI Research Team, Google Brain,
Founder of Black in AI

ABSTRACT
Computer vision has ceased to be a purely academic endeavor. From law
enforcement, to border control, to employment, healthcare diagnostics, and
assigning trust scores, computer vision systems are being rapidly
integrated into all aspects of society. In research, there are works that
purport to determine a person’s sexuality from their social network profile
images, others that claim to classify “violent individuals” from drone
footage. These works were published in high impact journals, and some were
presented at workshops in top tier computer vision conferences such as CVPR.

A critical public discourse surrounding the use of computer-vision based
technologies has also been mounting. For example, the use of facial
recognition technologies by policing agencies has been heavily critiqued
and, in response, companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM have pulled
or paused their facial recognition software services. Gender Shades showed
that commercial gender classification systems have high disparities in
error rates by skin-type and gender, and other works discuss the harms
caused by the mere existence of automatic gender recognition systems.
Recent papers have also exposed shockingly racist and sexist labels in
popular computer vision datasets–resulting in the removal of some. In this
talk, I will highlight some of these issues and proposed solutions to
mitigate bias, as well as how some of the proposed fixes could exacerbate
the problem rather than mitigate it.

SPEAKER BIO
Timnit Gebru was a senior research scientist at Google co-leading the
Ethical Artificial Intelligence research team. Her work focuses on
mitigating the potential negative impacts of machine learning based
systems. Timnit is also the co-founder of Black in AI, a non profit
supporting Black researchers and practitioners in artificial intelligence.
Prior to this, she did a postdoc at Microsoft Research, New York City in
the FATE (Fairness Transparency Accountability and Ethics in AI) group,
where she studied algorithmic bias and the ethical implications underlying
any data mining project. She received her Ph.D. from the Stanford
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, studying computer vision under Fei-Fei
Li. Prior to joining Fei-Fei’s lab, she worked at Apple designing circuits
and signal processing algorithms for various Apple products including the
first iPad.

This event is organized by the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS)
and co-sponsored by ESC, the U-M AI Lab, and the IT Dissonance Event Series.

Link to this event on the Web:
https://esc.umich.edu/event/timnit-gebru-computer-vision-who-is-helped-and-who-is-harmed/

More information about ESC: The Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing:
http://esc.umich.edu/


LOOKING AHEAD TO OUR NEXT ESC EVENT:

Charlton McIlwain: Smash the Mainframe -- The Collision Between Civil
Rights and Computing
February 2, 2021 @ 7:00 pm
https://esc.umich.edu/event/charlton-mcilwain-smash-the-mainframe/


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ESC is generously supported by the School of Information; the Center for
Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research; and the Department
of Communication & Media in the College of Literature, Science, and the
Arts at the University of Michigan.