Transparency: a Step Towards Fairness

5 min read

Pulse, a recent machine learning image reconstruction algorithm, sparked a lot of controversy. The purpose of the model was to reconstruct blurry, low resolution images. Unfortunately, when a low resolution image of President Obama was provided as input to the model, the result was the following:  Some machine learning experts attributed the model’s racial bias to the unevenness in the training data. They argued that FlickFaceHQ, the dataset on which the model was pretrained, contained mostly images of white faces. Because of that, the model learned to reconstruct white faces most of the time. Their argument has some merit. Indeed,…...

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Nikolas Papastavrou Hi, I am Nikolas, a computer science graduate at Pomona College, and I enjoy learning about innovative applications of machine learning. My first industry exposure to machine learning was when I interned in Yelp's Search team last summer. Right now, I work as a machine learning software engineer at a healthcare startup. My team builds models that predict worst case scenarios for patients at risk of medical emergencies. I am interested in investigating the social implications of artificial Intelligence and machine learning. By acknowledging potentially harmful aspects of these emerging technologies, we will be in a better position to use them ethically. In my free time, I enjoy running, reading books, debating with friends, journaling, drinking boba, and binging series on Netflix. I also like studying and practicing Chinese.

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