Tag Archives: Helena

Presentation of “a governance framework for algorithmic accountability and transparency” at the European Parliament

On October 25th we presented our Science Technology Options Assessment (STOA) report on “a governance framework for algorithmic accountability and transparency” to the Members of the European Parliament and the European Parliament Research Services “Panel for the Future of Science and Technology.

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A Month of Conferences and Workshops

June was a month of conferences and workshops for UnBias. The 3rd UnBias project meeting on June 1st, hosted by our Edinburgh partners this time, was quickly followed by the Ethicomp and EuroDIG conferences which both took place from June 5th to 8th.

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9th International ACM Web Science Conference 2017

The 9th International ACM Web Science Conference 2017 will be held from June 26 to June 28, 2017 inTroy, NY (USA) and is organized by the Rensselaer Web Science Research Center and the Tetherless World Constellation at RPI. The conference series by the Web Science Trust is following events in Athens, Raleigh, Koblenz, Evanston, Paris, Indiana, Oxford and Hannover.

The conference brings together researchers from multiple disciplines, like computer science, sociology, economics, information science, or psychology. Web Science is the emergent study of the people and technologies, applications, processes and practices that shape and are shaped by the World Wide Web. Web Science aims to draw together theories, methods and findings from across academic disciplines, and to collaborate with industry, business, government and civil society, to develop our knowledge and understanding of the Web: the largest socio-technical infrastructure in human history.

AMOIA workshop at ACM Web Science 2017

AMOIA  (Algorithm Mediated Online Information Access) – user trust, transparency, control and responsibility

This Web Science 2017 workshop, delivered by the UnBias project, will be an interactive audience discussion on the role of algorithms in mediating access to information online and issues of trust, transparency, control and responsibility this raises.

The workshop will consist of two parts. The first half will feature talks from the UnBias project and related work by invited speakers. The talks by the UnBias team will contrast the concerns and recommendations that were raised by teen-aged ‘digital natives’ in our Youth Juries deliberations and user observation studies with the perspectives and suggestions from our stakeholder engagement discussions with industry, regulators and civil-society organizations. The second half will be an interactive discussion with the workshop participants based on case studies. Key questions and outcomes from this discussion will be put online for WebSci’17 conference participants to refer to and discuss/comment on during the rest of the conference.

The case studies we will focus on:

  • Case Study 1: The role of recommender algorithms in hoaxes and fake news on the Web
  • Case Study 2: Business models that share AMOIA, how can web-science boost Corporate Social Responsibility / Responsible Research and Innovation
  • Case Study 3: Unintended algorithmic discrimination on the web – routes towards detection and prevention

The UnBias project investigates the user experience of algorithm driven services and the processes of algorithm design. We focus on the interest of a wide range of stakeholders and carry out activities that 1) support user understanding about algorithm mediated information environments, 2) raise awareness among providers of ‘smart’ systems about the concerns and rights of users, and 3) generate debate about the ‘fair’ operation of algorithms in modern life. This EPSRC funded project will provide policy recommendations, ethical guidelines and a ‘fairness toolkit’ that will be co-produced with stakeholders.

The workshop will be a half-day event

Programme

9:00 – 9:10   Introduction
9:10 – 9:30   Observations from the Youth Juries deliberations with young people, by Elvira Perez (University of Nottingham)
9:30 – 9:50   Insights from user observation studies, by Helena Webb (University of Oxford)
9:50 – 10:10 Insights from discussions with industry, regulator and civil-society stakeholders, by Ansgar Koene (University of Nottingham)
10:10 – 10:30  “Platforms: Do we trust them”, by Rene Arnold
10:30 – 10:50 “IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems”, by John Havens
10:50 – 11:10 Break
11:10 – 11:50 Discussion of case study 1
11:50 – 12:30 Discussion of case study 2
12:30 – 12:50 Break
12:50 – 13:30 Discussion of case study 3
13:30 – 14:00 Summary of outcomes

Key dates

Workshop registration deadline: 18 June 2017
Workshop date: 25 June 2017
Conference dates: 26-28 June 2017

TRILCon 2017

The 4th Winchester Conference on Trust, Risk, Information and the Law

Our overall theme for this conference will be:

Artificial and De-Personalised Decision-Making: Machine-Learning, A.I. and Drones

Programme in brief

  • Plenary Address: Prof. Katie Athkinson
    ‘Arguments, Values and Baseball: AI support for Legal Practice’
  • Stream 1A: Automated weapons & automated investigations
  • Stream 1B: Smart retail & behavioural advertising
  • Stream 2A: Algorithms & criminal justice
  • Stream 2B: Data power & its regulation
  • Stream 1C: Artificial intelligence, decision-making & the protection of human interests
  • Stream 2C: Smart contracts & smart machines
  • Plenary Address:  John McNamara
    ‘Protecting trust in a world disrupted by machine learning’
  • Stream 3A:  Workshop run by the UnBias project: An exploration of trust, transparency and bias in law enforcement and judicial decision support systems
  • Stream 3B: Autonomous vehicles
  • Stream 3C: Values & machine learning
  • Panel Discussion: The Future of A.I., machine learning and
    algorithmic decision-making

Full programme available here
Abstract booklet available here

UnBias will be at the conference running the workshop: ‘An exploration of trust, transparency and bias in law enforcement and judicial decision support systems’
This workshop will consist of two parts. In the first twenty minutes we will review some of the outcomes of the UnBias project. Specifically, we will contrast the concerns and recommendations that were raised by teen-aged ‘digital natives’ in our Youth Juries
deliberations with the perspectives and suggestions from our stakeholder engagement discussions. We will then spend a couple of minutes to introduce our workshop participants to a case study based on the ProPublica report of bias in the COMPAS algorithms for recidivism probability forecasting and the subsequent studies showing that when it is not possible for an algorithm to be equally predictive for all without disparities in harm of incorrect predictions when the two populations have unequal base rates. This case study
will form the basis for discussions during the remainder of the session. Some of the questions we will raise include: what are the implications of such findings for trust in law enforcement and judicial rulings? What are the minimum levels of transparency and output audit-ability that a decision support system must have in order to maintain trust in a fair application of the law? The outcomes of the discussion will be summarized in a short report that will be sent out to all participants and feed into the development of policy
recommendations by UnBias.

Publication of 1st WP4 workshop report

We are please to announce that the report summarizing the outcomes of the first UnBias project stakeholder engagement workshop is now available for public dissemination.

The workshop took place on February 3rd 2017 at the Digital Catapult centre in London, UK. It brought together participants from academia, education, NGOs and enterprises to discuss fairness in relation to algorithmic practice and design. At the heart of the discussion were four case studies highlighting fake news, personalisation, gaming the system, and transparency.

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