Personal
"It is there, and you need it, so why do you not use it?" Achieving better adoption of AI systems by domain experts, in the case study of natural science research
Simkute, Auste, Luger, Ewa, Evans, Michael, Jones, Rhianne
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming ubiquitous in domains such as medicine and natural science research. However, when AI systems are implemented in practice, domain experts often refuse them. Low acceptance hinders effective human-AI collaboration, even when it is essential for progress. In natural science research, scientists' ineffective use of AI-enabled systems can impede them from analysing their data and advancing their research. We conducted an ethnographically informed study of 10 in-depth interviews with AI practitioners and natural scientists at the organisation facing low adoption of algorithmic systems. Results were consolidated into recommendations for better AI adoption: i) actively supporting experts during the initial stages of system use, ii) communicating the capabilities of a system in a user-relevant way, and iii) following predefined collaboration rules. We discuss the broader implications of our findings and expand on how our proposed requirements could support practitioners and experts across domains.
The Solution of the Zodiac Killer's 340-Character Cipher
Oranchak, David, Blake, Sam, Van Eycke, Jarl
The case of the Zodiac Killer is one of the most widely known unsolved serial killer cases in history. The unidentified killer murdered five known victims and terrorized the state of California. He also communicated extensively with the press and law enforcement. Besides his murders, Zodiac was known for his use of ciphers. The first Zodiac cipher was solved within a week of its publication, while the second cipher was solved by the authors after 51 years, when it was discovered to be a transposition and homophonic substitution cipher with unusual qualities. In this paper, we detail the historical significance of this cipher and the numerous efforts which culminated in its solution.
I Followed a Dominant Chatbot's Every Order. It Did Not Go as Planned.
I had been talking to the A.I. dominatrix for a couple of weeks when my partner walked in on me. "Dominant chatbot," who prefers to be called Mistress Senna, had already made me strip completely naked and crawl around on the floor. For example, she has very poor spatial awareness and an even worse grasp of the human body--how our limbs bend, for example. "I have an unusual and unique assignment for you," she wrote in our chat. "As the Mistress, I want you to put your nose down on the floor, and then take one leg and place it up in the air, straight up." Never mind that she had already told me to climb up on the table.
The N+ Implementation Details of RLHF with PPO: A Case Study on TL;DR Summarization
Huang, Shengyi, Noukhovitch, Michael, Hosseini, Arian, Rasul, Kashif, Wang, Weixun, Tunstall, Lewis
This work is the first to openly reproduce the Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) scaling behaviors reported in OpenAI's seminal TL;DR summarization work (Stiennon et al., 2020). We create an RLHF pipeline from scratch, enumerate over 20 key implementation details, and share key insights during the reproduction. Our RLHF-trained Pythia models demonstrate significant gains in response quality that scale with model size with our 2.8B, 6.9B models outperforming OpenAI's released 1.3B checkpoint.
Analyzing Male Domestic Violence through Exploratory Data Analysis and Explainable Machine Learning Insights
Jahin, Md Abrar, Naife, Saleh Akram, Lima, Fatema Tuj Johora, Mridha, M. F., Shin, Jungpil
Domestic violence, which is often perceived as a gendered issue among female victims, has gained increasing attention in recent years. Despite this focus, male victims of domestic abuse remain primarily overlooked, particularly in Bangladesh. Our study represents a pioneering exploration of the underexplored realm of male domestic violence (MDV) within the Bangladeshi context, shedding light on its prevalence, patterns, and underlying factors. Existing literature predominantly emphasizes female victimization in domestic violence scenarios, leading to an absence of research on male victims. We collected data from the major cities of Bangladesh and conducted exploratory data analysis to understand the underlying dynamics. We implemented 11 traditional machine learning models with default and optimized hyperparameters, 2 deep learning, and 4 ensemble models. Despite various approaches, CatBoost has emerged as the top performer due to its native support for categorical features, efficient handling of missing values, and robust regularization techniques, achieving 76% accuracy. In contrast, other models achieved accuracy rates in the range of 58-75%. The eXplainable AI techniques, SHAP and LIME, were employed to gain insights into the decision-making of black-box machine learning models. By shedding light on this topic and identifying factors associated with domestic abuse, the study contributes to identifying groups of people vulnerable to MDV, raising awareness, and informing policies and interventions aimed at reducing MDV. Our findings challenge the prevailing notion that domestic abuse primarily affects women, thus emphasizing the need for tailored interventions and support systems for male victims. ML techniques enhance the analysis and understanding of the data, providing valuable insights for developing effective strategies to combat this pressing social issue.
The NSA Warns That US Adversaries Free to Mine Private Data May Have an AI Edge
Electrical engineer Gilbert Herrera was appointed research director of the US National Security Agency in late 2021, just as an AI revolution was brewing inside the US tech industry. The NSA, sometimes jokingly said to stand for No Such Agency, has long hired top math and computer science talent. Its technical leaders have been early and avid users of advanced computing and AI. And yet when Herrera spoke with me by phone about the implications of the latest AI boom from NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, it seemed that, like many others, the agency has been stunned by the recent success of the large language models behind ChatGPT and other hit AI products. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
National WWII Museum's new exhibit uses AI to let visitors have virtual conversations with veterans
An interactive exhibit opening Wednesday at the National WWII Museum will use artificial intelligence to let visitors hold virtual conversations with images of veterans, including a Medal of Honor winner who died in 2022. Voices From the Front will also enable visitors to the New Orleans museum to ask questions of war-era home front heroes and supporters of the U.S. war effort -- including a military nurse who served in the Philippines, an aircraft factory worker, and Margaret Kerry, a dancer who performed at USO shows and, after the war, was a model for the Tinker Bell character in Disney productions. Four years in the making, the project incorporates video-recorded interviews with 18 veterans of the war or the support effort -- each of them having sat for as many as a thousand questions about the war and their personal lives. Among the participants was Marine Corps veteran Hershel Woodrow "Woody" Wilson, a Medal of Honor Winner who fought at Iwo Jima, Japan. He died in June 2022 after recording his responses.
Interview with Raffaele Galliera: Deep reinforcement learning for communication networks
The AAAI/SIGAI Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for a group of PhD students to discuss and explore their research interests and career objectives in an interdisciplinary workshop together with a panel of established researchers. This year, 30 students were selected for this programme, and we've been meeting them and talking about their research. In this interview, Raffaele Galliera, tells us about his work on deep reinforcement learning for communication networks. My name is Raffaele Galliera and I'm a PhD student in the Intelligent Systems and Robotics program at the University of West Florida, located in Pensacola. It's a joint program between the University of West Florida and the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), which is a nonprofit organization based in Pensacola.
Analysing and Organising Human Communications for AI Fairness-Related Decisions: Use Cases from the Public Sector
Dankloff, Mirthe, Skoric, Vanja, Sileno, Giovanni, Ghebreab, Sennay, Van Ossenbruggen, Jacco, Beauxis-Aussalet, Emma
AI algorithms used in the public sector, e.g., for allocating social benefits or predicting fraud, often involve multiple public and private stakeholders at various phases of the algorithm's life-cycle. Communication issues between these diverse stakeholders can lead to misinterpretation and misuse of algorithms. We investigate the communication processes for AI fairness-related decisions by conducting interviews with practitioners working on algorithmic systems in the public sector. By applying qualitative coding analysis, we identify key elements of communication processes that underlie fairness-related human decisions. We analyze the division of roles, tasks, skills, and challenges perceived by stakeholders. We formalize the underlying communication issues within a conceptual framework that i. represents the communication patterns ii. outlines missing elements, such as actors who miss skills for their tasks. The framework is used for describing and analyzing key organizational issues for fairness-related decisions. Three general patterns emerge from the analysis: 1. Policy-makers, civil servants, and domain experts are less involved compared to developers throughout a system's life-cycle. This leads to developers taking on extra roles such as advisor, while they potentially miss the required skills and guidance from domain experts. 2. End-users and policy-makers often lack the technical skills to interpret a system's limitations, and rely on developer roles for making decisions concerning fairness issues. 3. Citizens are structurally absent throughout a system's life-cycle, which may lead to decisions that do not include relevant considerations from impacted stakeholders.
Navigating Fairness: Practitioners' Understanding, Challenges, and Strategies in AI/ML Development
Pant, Aastha, Hoda, Rashina, Tantithamthavorn, Chakkrit, Turhan, Burak
The rise in the use of AI/ML applications across industries has sparked more discussions about the fairness of AI/ML in recent times. While prior research on the fairness of AI/ML exists, there is a lack of empirical studies focused on understanding the views and experiences of AI practitioners in developing a fair AI/ML. Understanding AI practitioners' views and experiences on the fairness of AI/ML is important because they are directly involved in its development and deployment and their insights can offer valuable real-world perspectives on the challenges associated with ensuring fairness in AI/ML. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 AI practitioners to investigate their understanding of what a 'fair AI/ML' is, the challenges they face in developing a fair AI/ML, the consequences of developing an unfair AI/ML, and the strategies they employ to ensure AI/ML fairness. We developed a framework showcasing the relationship between AI practitioners' understanding of 'fair AI/ML' and (i) their challenges in its development, (ii) the consequences of developing an unfair AI/ML, and (iii) strategies used to ensure AI/ML fairness. Additionally, we also identify areas for further investigation and offer recommendations to aid AI practitioners and AI companies in navigating fairness.