Events Calendar

CS Seminar: Ece Kamar (Microsoft Research) - Towards Hybrid Systems for Combining and Machine and Human Intelligence

Speaker: Ece Kamar, Microsoft Research Redmond

Talk Title: Towards Hybrid Systems for Combining and Machine and Human Intelligence

Series: CS Seminar Series

Abstract: Despite advances in Artificial Intelligence, computer systems still have limitations in accomplishing tasks that come naturally to humans such as making sense of images or carrying out a successful dialog. Having easy and on demand access to human intelligence through crowdsourcing offers us a new type of resource to train, improve and complement intelligent systems. However, this resource comes with a new set of challenges. Making human computation a reliable component of intelligent systems requires moving away from manual designs and controls towards generalizable automation techniques, algorithms, models and designs. In this talk, I will present an overview of our recent research efforts towards this goal focusing both on using machine intelligence for reliable crowdsourcing and on developing AI systems that can benefit from having humans in the loop.

I will start by showing how machine learning and decision-theoretic reasoning can be used in harmony to leverage the complementary strengths of humans and computational agents to solve crowdsourcing tasks efficiently. Next, I will present an overview of different studies towards maintaining reliable access to human intelligence. I will conclude the talk by discussing opportunities and challenges in using crowdsourcing to power and improve AI systems.


Biography: Ece Kamar is a researcher at the Adaptive Systems and Interaction group at Microsoft Research Redmond. Ece earned her Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard University. While at Harvard, she received the Microsoft Research fellowship and Robert L. Wallace Prize Fellowship for her work on Artificial Intelligence. She currently serves in the program committee of conferences such as AAAI, AAMAS, IJCAI, WWW, UAI and HCOMP. Her research interests include human-computer collaboration, decision-making under uncertainty, probabilistic reasoning and mechanism design with a focus on real-world applications that bring people and adaptive agents together.

Host: Teamcore Research Group

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Assistant to CS chair