Events Calendar

CS Colloquium: Alice Xiang (Sony AI) - Algorithmic Fairness and the Law

Speaker: Alice Xiang, Sony AI

Talk Title: Algorithmic Fairness and the Law

Series: Computer Science Colloquium

Abstract: What does it mean for an algorithm or decision-making process to be fair? When making decisions using data, how do we account for historical biases or systemic inequalities? While the algorithmic fairness literature is comparatively nascent, these are questions the law has long grappled with. This talk will provide an overview of the algorithmic fairness literature and connections with anti-discrimination jurisprudence. In particular, this talk will discuss the tension between the use of protected class attributes to mitigate algorithmic bias and the law's preference for efforts to address discrimination that are blind or neutral to protected class attributes. Divergences like this between legal compatibility and technical feasibility are challenges that will need to be addressed in order to deploy algorithmic fairness methods in practice.

This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium.


Biography: Alice Xiang is a Senior Research Scientist at Sony AI, where she leads research on responsible AI. Alice previously worked as the Head of Fairness, Transparency, and Accountability Research at the Partnership on AI, where she led a team of interdisciplinary researchers and a portfolio of multi-stakeholder research initiatives. She also served as a Visiting Scholar at Tsinghua University's Yau Mathematical Sciences Center. She was recognized as one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics, and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, MIT Tech Review, Fortune, and others, for her work on algorithmic bias and transparency, criminal justice risk assessment tools, and AI ethics. Alice holds a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, a Master's in Development Economics from Oxford, a Master's in Statistics from Harvard, and a Bachelor's in Economics from Harvard.


Host: Sirisha Rambhatla (sirishar@usc.edu)

Webcast: https://viterbi.webex.com/viterbi/j.php?MTID=m5f18c96c4db845b65c22fa7c17d9516c

Location: Online Webex

WebCast Link: https://viterbi.webex.com/viterbi/j.php?MTID=m5f18c96c4db845b65c22fa7c17d9516c

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Computer Science Department