Research Papers

This paper proposed a comprehensive mixed-methods framework with varied samples of older adults, including user experience, usability assessments, and in-depth interviews with the integration of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods. The experience of older adults' interaction with the Ehealth interface is collected through interviews and transformed into operatable databases whereas XAI methods are utilized to explain the collected interview results in this research work. The results show that XAI-infused e-health interfaces could play an important role in bridging the age-related digital divide by investigating elders' preferences when interacting with E-health interfaces. Furthermore, the study identifies important design factors, such as intuitive visualization and straightforward explanations, that are critical for creating efficient Human Computer Interaction (HCI) tools among older users. Furthermore, this study emphasizes the revolutionary potential of XAI in e-health interfaces for older users, emphasizing the importance of transparency and understandability in HCI-driven healthcare solutions. This study's findings have far-reaching implications for the design and development of user-centric e-health technologies, intending to increase the overall well-being of older adults.

Bound by the Bounty: Collaboratively Shaping Evaluation Processes for Queer AI Harms

Organizers of QueerInAI, Nathan Dennler, Anaelia Ovalle +11

Bias evaluation benchmarks and dataset and model documentation have emerged as central processes for assessing the biases and harms of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. However, these auditing processes have been criticized for their failure to integrate the knowledge of marginalized communities and consider the power dynamics between auditors and the communities. Consequently, modes of bias evaluation have been proposed that engage impacted communities in identifying and assessing the harms of AI systems (e.g., bias bounties). Even so, asking what marginalized communities want from such auditing processes has been neglected. In this paper, we ask queer communities for their positions on, and desires from, auditing processes. To this end, we organized a participatory workshop to critique and redesign bias bounties from queer perspectives. We found that when given space, the scope of feedback from workshop participants goes far beyond what bias bounties afford, with participants questioning the ownership, incentives, and efficacy of bounties. We conclude by advocating for community ownership of bounties and complementing bounties with participatory processes (e.g., co-creation).

Evaluating the Impact of Social Determinants on Health Prediction in the Intensive Care Unit

Ming Ying Yang, Gloria Hyunjung Kwak, Tom Pollard +2

Social determinants of health (SDOH) -- the conditions in which people live, grow, and age -- play a crucial role in a person's health and well-being. There is a large, compelling body of evidence in population health studies showing that a wide range of SDOH is strongly correlated with health outcomes. Yet, a majority of the risk prediction models based on electronic health records (EHR) do not incorporate a comprehensive set of SDOH features as they are often noisy or simply unavailable. Our work links a publicly available EHR database, MIMIC-IV, to well-documented SDOH features. We investigate the impact of such features on common EHR prediction tasks across different patient populations. We find that community-level SDOH features do not improve model performance for a general patient population, but can improve data-limited model fairness for specific subpopulations. We also demonstrate that SDOH features are vital for conducting thorough audits of algorithmic biases beyond protective attributes. We hope the new integrated EHR-SDOH database will enable studies on the relationship between community health and individual outcomes and provide new benchmarks to study algorithmic biases beyond race, gender, and age.

Implementing Responsible AI: Tensions and Trade-Offs Between Ethics Aspects

Conrad Sanderson, David Douglas, Qinghua Lu

Many sets of ethics principles for responsible AI have been proposed to allay concerns about misuse and abuse of AI/ML systems. The underlying aspects of such sets of principles include privacy, accuracy, fairness, robustness, explainability, and transparency. However, there are potential tensions between these aspects that pose difficulties for AI/ML developers seeking to follow these principles. For example, increasing the accuracy of an AI/ML system may reduce its explainability. As part of the ongoing effort to operationalise the principles into practice, in this work we compile and discuss a catalogue of 10 notable tensions, trade-offs and other interactions between the underlying aspects. We primarily focus on two-sided interactions, drawing on support spread across a diverse literature. This catalogue can be helpful in raising awareness of the possible interactions between aspects of ethics principles, as well as facilitating well-supported judgements by the designers and developers of AI/ML systems.

Most machine learning systems that interact with humans construct some notion of a person's "identity," yet the default paradigm in AI research envisions identity with essential attributes that are discrete and static. In stark contrast, strands of thought within critical theory present a conception of identity as malleable and constructed entirely through interaction; a doing rather than a being. In this work, we distill some of these ideas for machine learning practitioners and introduce a theory of identity as autopoiesis, circular processes of formation and function. We argue that the default paradigm of identity used by the field immobilizes existing identity categories and the power differentials that co$\unicode{x2010}$occur, due to the absence of iterative feedback to our models. This includes a critique of emergent AI fairness practices that continue to impose the default paradigm. Finally, we apply our theory to sketch approaches to autopoietic identity through multilevel optimization and relational learning. While these ideas raise many open questions, we imagine the possibilities of machines that are capable of expressing human identity as a relationship perpetually in flux.

Information-Theoretic Bias Reduction via Causal View of Spurious Correlation

Seonguk Seo, Joon-Young Lee, Bohyung Han

We propose an information-theoretic bias measurement technique through a causal interpretation of spurious correlation, which is effective to identify the feature-level algorithmic bias by taking advantage of conditional mutual information. Although several bias measurement methods have been proposed and widely investigated to achieve algorithmic fairness in various tasks such as face recognition, their accuracy- or logit-based metrics are susceptible to leading to trivial prediction score adjustment rather than fundamental bias reduction. Hence, we design a novel debiasing framework against the algorithmic bias, which incorporates a bias regularization loss derived by the proposed information-theoretic bias measurement approach. In addition, we present a simple yet effective unsupervised debiasing technique based on stochastic label noise, which does not require the explicit supervision of bias information. The proposed bias measurement and debiasing approaches are validated in diverse realistic scenarios through extensive experiments on multiple standard benchmarks.

Conversational AI systems are being used in personal devices, providing users with highly personalized content. Personalized knowledge graphs (PKGs) are one of the recently proposed methods to store users' information in a structured form and tailor answers to their liking. Personalization, however, is prone to amplifying bias and contributing to the echo-chamber phenomenon. In this paper, we discuss different types of biases in conversational search systems, with the emphasis on the biases that are related to PKGs. We review existing definitions of bias in the literature: people bias, algorithm bias, and a combination of the two, and further propose different strategies for tackling these biases for conversational search systems. Finally, we discuss methods for measuring bias and evaluating user satisfaction.

Generative AI model outputs have been increasingly evaluated for their (in)ability to represent non-Western cultures. We argue that these evaluations often operate through reductive ideals of representation, abstracted from how people define their own representation and neglecting the inherently interpretive and contextual nature of cultural representation. In contrast to these 'thin' evaluations, we introduce the idea of 'thick evaluations:' a more granular, situated, and discursive measurement framework for evaluating representations of social worlds in AI outputs, steeped in communities' own understandings of representation. We develop this evaluation framework through workshops in South Asia, by studying the 'thick' ways in which people interpret and assign meaning to AI-generated images of their own cultures. We introduce practices for thicker evaluations of representation that expand the understanding of representation underpinning AI evaluations and by co-constructing metrics with communities, bringing measurement in line with the experiences of communities on the ground.

Employing Large Language Models (LLM) in various downstream applications such as classification is crucial, especially for smaller companies lacking the expertise and resources required for fine-tuning a model. Fairness in LLMs helps ensure inclusivity, equal representation based on factors such as race, gender and promotes responsible AI deployment. As the use of LLMs has become increasingly prevalent, it is essential to assess whether LLMs can generate fair outcomes when subjected to considerations of fairness. In this study, we introduce a framework outlining fairness regulations aligned with various fairness definitions, with each definition being modulated by varying degrees of abstraction. We explore the configuration for in-context learning and the procedure for selecting in-context demonstrations using RAG, while incorporating fairness rules into the process. Experiments conducted with different LLMs indicate that GPT-4 delivers superior results in terms of both accuracy and fairness compared to other models. This work is one of the early attempts to achieve fairness in prediction tasks by utilizing LLMs through in-context learning.

Understanding and addressing unfairness in LLMs are crucial for responsible AI deployment. However, there is a limited number of quantitative analyses and in-depth studies regarding fairness evaluations in LLMs, especially when applying LLMs to high-stakes fields. This work aims to fill this gap by providing a systematic evaluation of the effectiveness and fairness of LLMs using ChatGPT as a study case. We focus on assessing ChatGPT's performance in high-takes fields including education, criminology, finance and healthcare. To conduct a thorough evaluation, we consider both group fairness and individual fairness metrics. We also observe the disparities in ChatGPT's outputs under a set of biased or unbiased prompts. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of LLMs' fairness performance, facilitates bias mitigation and fosters the development of responsible AI systems.

How Algorithms Shape the Distribution of Political Advertising: Case Studies of Facebook, Google, and TikTok

Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, Christelle Tessono, Arvind Narayanan +1

Online platforms play an increasingly important role in shaping democracy by influencing the distribution of political information to the electorate. In recent years, political campaigns have spent heavily on the platforms' algorithmic tools to target voters with online advertising. While the public interest in understanding how platforms perform the task of shaping the political discourse has never been higher, the efforts of the major platforms to make the necessary disclosures to understand their practices falls woefully short. In this study, we collect and analyze a dataset containing over 800,000 ads and 2.5 million videos about the 2020 U.S. presidential election from Facebook, Google, and TikTok. We conduct the first large scale data analysis of public data to critically evaluate how these platforms amplified or moderated the distribution of political advertisements. We conclude with recommendations for how to improve the disclosures so that the public can hold the platforms and political advertisers accountable.

Fragmentation, echo chambers, and their amelioration in social networks have been a growing concern in the academic and non-academic world. This paper shows how, under the assumption of homophily, echo chambers and fragmentation are system-immanent phenomena of highly flexible social networks, even under ideal conditions for heterogeneity. We achieve this by finding an analytical, network-based solution to the Schelling model and by proving that weak ties do not hinder the process. Furthermore, we derive that no level of positive algorithmic bias in the form of rewiring is capable of preventing fragmentation and its effect on reducing the fragmentation speed is negligible.