Speaker:Lu Cheng

Algorithmic Solutions for Socially Responsible AI

Abstract:
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have become increasingly pervasive, offering both promises and perils. In response, researchers and
organizations have been working to publish principles for the responsible use of AI. To bridge from these principles to responsible AI practice, in this talk, I will introduce
a framework of Socially Responsible AI (SRAI) that encompasses an interdisciplinary definition of AI's social responsibility, a pyramid that outlines four specific AI responsibilities in a hierarchy, and three human-centered operations -- to Protect, Inform, and Prevent. To materialize AI for good, for example, the protecting dimension aims to cover or shield humans from harm, injury, and negative impact; the informing dimension aims to deliver the facts or information in a timely way; the preventing dimension aims to prevent/mitigate the negative impact of AI algorithms. I will use representative tasks in social media mining to illustrate each of the three operations. In particular, I will introduce
my recent work in session-based cyberbullying detection, causal understanding of disinformation dissemination, and unintended bias mitigation to elucidate how SRAI can protect and inform users, as well as mitigate
societal harms. Finally, I will touch upon future work with themes focused on advancing AI algorithms and AI for social good.

Bio:

Lu Cheng is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI) at Arizona State University. Advised by Prof. Huan Liu, Lu's research focuses on bridging from conceptual AI principles to responsible AI practice using both statistical and causality-aware methods. Lu's work has appeared in and been invited to top venues for AI (e.g., AAAI, IJCAI)), data mining (e.g., KDD, WWW, WSDM), and NLP (ACL). She is the web chair of WSDM'22 and senior program committee member of AAAI'22. She won the 2021 ASU Dean's Dissertation Award, 2020 ASU Graduate Outstanding Research Award, IBM Ph.D. Social Good Fellowship, Visa Research Scholarship, and ASU Grace Hopper Celebration Scholarship.