Building Accountable NLP Models: on Social Bias Detection and Mitigation

Speaker:        Dr. Jieyu ZHAO
                UCLA

Title:          "Building Accountable NLP Models: on Social Bias Detection
                and Mitigation"

Date:           Thursday, 10 February 2022

Time:           10:00am - 11:00am (HKT)

Zoom link:
https://hkust.zoom.us/j/928308079?pwd=MW9wTCtlSDd2MnViZGdNd2oreUpXZz09

Meeting ID:     928 308 079

Passcode:       20212022


Abstract:

Natural Language Processing (NLP) plays an important role in many
applications, including resume filtering, text analysis, and information
retrieval. Despite the remarkable accuracy enabled by the advances in
machine learning used in many applications, the technique may discover and
generalize the societal biases implicit in the data. For example, an
automatic resume filtering system may unconsciously select candidates
based on their gender and race due to implicit associations between
applicant names and job titles, causing the societal disparity discovered
by researchers. Various laws and policies have been designed to ensure
social equality and diversity. However, there is no such mechanism for a
machine learning model for sensitive applications. My research analyzes
the potential stereotypes in various machine learning models and develops
computational approaches to enhance fairness in a wide range of NLP
applications. The broader impact of my research aligns with one the
concerns of machine learning community: how can we do AI for (social)
good.


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Biography:

Jieyu Zhao obtained her PhD in the department of Computer Science at UCLA
where she was advised by Prof. Kai-Wei Chang. Her research interest lies
in fairness of ML/NLP models. Her paper got the EMNLP Best Long Paper
Award (2017). She was one of the recipients of 2020 Microsoft PhD
Fellowship and has been selected to participate in 2021 Rising Stars in
EECS workshop. Her research has been covered by news media such as Wires,
The Daily Mail and South China Morning Post. She was invited by UN-WOMEN
Beijing on a panel discussion about gender equality and social
responsibility. More detail can be found at https://jyzhao.net/
[jyzhao.net].