NSF Program on Fairness in AI in Collaboration with Amazon (FAI):

The 2022 FAI PI Meeting

Introduction:  This 2-day virtual event convenes Fair-AI researchers whose work is supported by the NSF Program on Fairness in AI in Collaboration with Amazon (FAI), as well as prominent players in the responsible AI space from government, industry, and civil society to discuss basic research and advances and roadblocks to developing best practices and standards in Fair-AI research and practice.

Event dates and duration: July 11-12, 2022, from 11 AM to 5 PM ET.

Event venues:

Keynotes:

AI systems sometimes do not operate as intended because they are making inferences from patterns observed in data rather than a true understanding of what causes those patterns. Ensuring that these inferences are helpful and not harmful in particular use cases – especially when inferences are rapidly scaled and amplified – is fundamental to trustworthy AI. While answers to the question of what makes an AI technology trustworthy differ, there are certain key characteristics which support trustworthiness, including accuracy, explainability and interpretability, privacy, reliability, robustness, safety, security (resilience) and mitigation of harmful bias. There also are key guiding principles to take into account such as accountability, fairness, and equity. Cultivating trust and communication about how to understand and manage the risks of AI systems will help create opportunities for innovation and realize the full potential of this technology.

This presentation overviews NIST’s effort in developing a framework to better manage risks to individuals, organizations, and society associated with AI. The NIST Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF or Framework) is intended for voluntary use and to improve the ability to incorporate trustworthiness considerations into the design, development, use, and evaluation of AI products, services, and systems.

Algorithmic (data-driven) nudges are increasingly being used to help human decision makers on a variety of match-/market- making platforms from gig-economy and e-commerce platforms to online conferencing and charity platforms. A defining feature of these platforms is that they are multi-sided, i.e., the algorithms mediate interactions between different types of stakeholders. Many existing notions of individual and group fairness in algorithmic fairness literature have largely been inspired by predictive risk assessment contexts (e.g., credit or recidivism risk assessments) that are often single sided. As such, these notions are insufficient to address novel unfairness and bias considerations that arise when the mediating algorithm can trade-off beneficial outcomes for one side with those of the other side(s). In this talk, I will discuss the challenges we faced in our attempts to define and operationalize unfairness and bias notions in the context of a large e-commerce platform.

Schedule: Each day will last 6 hours (5 hours content + 1 hour break). The schedule for each day is as follows:

Day 1—Theme: Tools, Best-practices, and Standards for AI in High-stakes Domains

Time (ET)

Activity

Duration

Details

Speakers

Venue

11:00 AM – 11:20 AM

Opening Remarks

15 min +

5 min buffer

Hoda Heidari  (3 min):

Welcome, logistics, outline of the event

Margaret Martonosi–CISE Assistant Director (6 min): an overview of NSF/Amazon Partnership

Prem Natarajan (6 min): an overview of Amazon’s work on Fairness

Hoda Heidari

(CMU)

Margaret Martonosi

(NSF)

Prem Natarajan

(Amazon)

Zoom

11:20 AM – 12:00 AM

Keynote speech

30 min +

10 min Q&A

NIST AI Risk Management Framework

Elham Tabassi

(NIST)

Zoom

15-min Break

12:15 AM – 1:15 PM

Lightning talks + joint Q&A session

Theme: Application-

focused Fair-AI

7 min

Foundations of Fair AI in Medicine: Ensuring the Fair Use of Patient Attributes

Flavio Calmon

Zoom

7 min

Quantifying and Mitigating Disparities in Language Technologies

Graham Neubig

Zoom

7 min

Measuring and Mitigating Biases in Generic Image Representation

Vicente Ordonez

Zoom

7 min

Towards Holistic Bias Mitigation in Computer Vision Systems

Nuno Vasconselos

Zoom

7 min

Using Machine Learning to Address Structural Bias in Personnel Selection

Nan Zhang

Zoom

7 min

Bias measurement and mitigation at industrial scale

Rahul Gupta

(Amazon)

Zoom

15-min Break

1:30 PM – 2:15 PM

Poster and networking session

45 min

Poster presentations + networking

All participants

Gather

1-hour Break

3:15  PM – 4:00  PM

Expert panel

45 min

Panel discussion focused on roadblocks to developing, implementing and enforcing AI best practices, standards, and regulations

Maksim Karliuk (UNESCO)

Joshua P. Meltzer (Brookings)

Baobao Zhang (Syracuse University)

Zoom

15-min Break

4:15 PM – 4:45 PM

Breakout discussions

30 min

Discussions in smaller groups to develop a Fair-AI best-practices wishlist

All participants

Zoom

4:45 PM – 5:00 PM

Breakout summary reports

15 min

Groups to report back on their breakout discussions

Breakout group moderators

Zoom

Day 2—Theme: Effective Engagement with Stakeholders and Impacted Communities toward Fairer AI

Time (ET)

Activity

Duration

Details

Speakers

Venue

11:00 AM – 11:05 AM

Opening Remarks

5 min

Hoda Heidari (2 min):

outline of the day

Hoda Heidar

(CMU)

Zoom

11:05 AM – 11:45 AM

Keynote speech

30 min +

10 min Q&A

Unfairness and Bias in Multi-sided / Multistakeholder Online Platforms

Krishna Gummadi (MPI-SWS)

Zoom

15-min break/buffer

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Lightning talks + joint Q&A session

Theme: human-centered Fair-AI

7 min

Understanding and Mitigating the Biases of Face Detectors

Prateek Singhal (Amazon)

Zoom

7 min

Using AI to Increase Fairness by Improving Access to Justice

Kevin Ashley

Zoom

7 min

Fair AI in Public Policy - Achieving Fair Societal Outcomes in ML Applications to Education, Criminal Justice, and Health & Human Services

Hoda Heidari

Zoom

7 min

Organizing Crowd Audits to Detect Bias in Machine Learning

Jason Hong

Motahhare Eslami

Zoom

7 min

Fairness in Machine Learning with Human in the Loop

Yang Liu

Zoom

7 min

End-To-End Fairness for Algorithm-in-the-Loop Decision - Making in the Public Sector

Daniel Neill

Zoom

 7 min

Towards Adaptive and Interactive Post hoc Explanations

Chenhao Tan

 Zoom

15-min break

1:15 PM – 2:00 PM

Poster and networking session

45 min

Poster presentations + meet and greet

All participants

Gather

1-hour break

3:00  PM – 3:45 PM

Expert panel

45 min

Panel discussion focused on improving the policy and practical impact of Fair-AI

Maria De-Arteaga

(UT Austin)

Alex Engler (Brookings)

Sorelle Friedler (OSTP)

David Robinson

(UC Berkeley)

Zoom

15-min break/buffer

4:00  PM – 4:30 PM

Breakout discussions

30 min

Discussions in smaller groups to develop a list of desiderata for effective engagement with stakeholders and affected communities

All participants

Zoom

4:30 PM – 4:45 PM

Breakout summary reports

15  min

Groups to report back on their breakout discussions

Breakout group moderators

Zoom

4:45 PM – 5:00 PM

Concluding remarks and next steps

Up to 15 min

Summarizing the takeaways of the event and next steps to produce a white paper

Hoda Heidari

Zoom

Contact: Please feel free to send an email to Hoda Heidari for any questions or comments about this event.