Title: Modeling users in their health journey as evident in internet data

Abstract: Search engines are the first internet platform that people turn to when they have a medical question. The queries people make during their inquiries can help characterize their search path in sickness and in health and to serve as an intervention point to nudge them to better health outcomes.

In my talk I will present studies where characterization of the search path serves as a means for screening search engine users for different medical conditions. I will further show how such characterization is also beneficial in understanding users’ medical decision-making process. I will then demonstrate how simple interventions using online advertisements placed along the search pathway can steer people to better health choices in areas ranging from encouraging vaccination to selecting appropriate treatment choices for serious illnesses. Such interventions, which can utilize both implicit and explicit user models, can be rapidly and economically applied to the benefit of large populations.

Bio: Dr. Elad Yom-Tov is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and an Associate Research Fellow at the Technion. Before joining Microsoft he was with Yahoo Research, IBM Research, and Rafael. Dr. Yom-Tov studied at Tel-Aviv University and the Technion. His primary research interests are in applying large-scale Machine Learning and Information Retrieval methods to medicine. He has published four books, over 180 papers (of which 3 were awarded prizes), and was awarded more than 30 patents. His latest book is “Crowdsourced Health: How What You Do on the Internet Will Improve Medicine” (MIT Press, 2016).

Title: Algorithmic Analysis of People Images:
Reflections on Fairness, Human Likeness, and Social Norms for Image Recognition

Abstract: Cognitive services, such as those mimicking human vision and language capabilities, have proven to be a boon to developers looking to enhance user experience, through adaptive and personalized interfaces. They have had a democratizing effect, allowing those who are not machine learning experts, and/or who have limited computing resources, to access state-of-the-art AI. This talk examines the social behaviors of vision-based services, or how they treat the people depicted in images. In a series of studies, our team has audited the behaviors of popular image analysis services for potential gender and racial biases. I will present our techniques for discrimination discovery in this domain, as well as our work on understanding users’ perceptions of fairness using crowdsourcing approaches. I will summarize our observations, taking into consideration the larger socio-technical picture of how these opaque services are used, as well as some future directions for developing methodologies to audit such tools, which are simultaneously expected to be “humanlike” but fair.

Bio: Jahna Otterbacher received her doctorate in Information from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, USA). She is currently Associate Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Pure and Applied Sciences at the Open University of Cyprus (OUC). At OUC, she leads the Cyprus Center for Algorithmic Transparency (CyCAT), which conducts interdisciplinary research focused on promoting technical and educational solutions for promoting algorithmic transparency and literacy. Concurrent to this, Jahna co-leads the Fairness and Ethics in AI-Human Interaction (fAIre) group at CYENS, a new center of excellence and innovation in Nicosia, Cyprus, in collaboration with two international Advanced Partners, UCL and MPI. Her research has been funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (under Grant Agreements No. 739578 (RISE) & No. 810105 (CyCAT)), as well as the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation (under grants EXCELLENCE/0918/0086 (DESCANT) and EXCELLENCE/0421/0360 (KeepA(I)n)).

Title: Are we doing the right thing ? A digital humanism perspective

Abstract: In this talk, I will start with an overview of “Digital Humanism”, an approach to develop digital technologies centered on human and societal needs, building on and furthering social achievements. Arguably, much of digital innovation has earned a dubious reputation for being unethical and promoting socially undesirable power relations. Examples include the monopolization of the Web (see also the ongoing AI race between the big five), the formation of filter bubbles, the loss of privacy, or the spread of digital surveillance. “Our” technologies are disrupting societies and questioning our understanding of what it means to be human. However, this development is not God-given; alternative paths are possible, for people and society. In the second part I will therefore discuss some related challenges, what this means for our discipline, from research to teaching.

Bio: Hannes Werthner is a retired Computer Science Professor at the Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien. Prior to joining TU Wien, he had professorships at Austrian and international Universities. His research is in several fields such as Decision Support Systems, E-Commerce and E-Tourism, Recommender Systems. Besides research and teaching he started initiatives such as the Vienna PhD School of Informatics and the i2c / Informatics Innovation Center. In the area of E-Tourism, the International Federation for IT and Tourism (IFITT) grants the “Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award” to outstanding personalities in the field. He is a key person of the Digital Humanism Initiative – see also his latest contribution: “Perspectives on Digital Humanism” (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-86144-5)