NDAK22005U Fair and Transparent Machine Learning Methods (FTML)
MSc Programme in Computer Science
Deploying machine learning models for downstream applications brings with it a wealth of possibilities. However, there is also a non-negligible risk of potential harm if models are not developed carefully.
Data can encode undesired societal biases, which can in turn be
perpetuated by machine learning models if trained on such data.
There may be risks in developing automated solutions for certain
application tasks altogether. Moreover, ML models are often black
boxes whose decisions are not transparent to end-users, creating
imbalances and issues regarding the accountability of models.
Therefore, it is imperative to reflect on the benefits and risks of
ML models, to develop methods to detect and mitigate biases in ML
models, and to create solutions to make the inner workings of
models more transparent. This course focuses on the technical
solutions needed to improve the fairness, accountability and
transparency of machine learning models. As such, it assumes
students have prior knowledge of machine learning.
This course covers the following tentative topic list:
- Statistical notions of fairness and bias
- The intended usage of ML models, e.g. datasheets, model cards
- Learning fair representations, e.g. counterfactual data augmentation, adversarial training, model calibration
- Model interpretability and transparency
- Generating explanations, e.g. post-hoc explainability, generating free-text explanations
- Evaluating model explanations
- Probing representations for bias, e.g. functional testing, subspace probing, generative approaches
Knowledge of
- ML fairness: how to operationalise and measure fairness
- Model bias: how to automatically detect and mitigate ML model biases
- Transparency: interpretability and explainability for ML models
Skills to
- Develop methods to automatically detect, measure and mitigate biases in ML models
- Develop methods to interpret features deep neural networks have learned
- Develop methods to explain decisions made by ML models
- Transparently document the intended usage of ML models
Competences to
- Understand methods for bias detection and mitigation, interpretability and explainability
- Plan and carry out fairness and bias analyses on datasets and ML tasks
Selected papers and book chapters. See Absalon when the course is set up.
- Category
- Hours
- Lectures
- 16
- Preparation
- 90
- Practical exercises
- 0
- Project work
- 100
- Total
- 206
As
an exchange, guest and credit student - click here!
Continuing Education - click here!
PhD students can register for MSc course by following the same procedure as credit students, see link above.
- Credit
- 7,5 ECTS
- Type of assessment
- Oral examination, during courseWritten assignment, during course
- Type of assessment details
- The exam consists of two parts:
1) A class presentation of an academic paper (oral part)
2) An individual mini project on a topic covered in the course, the findings of which are to be documented in a short report (written part)
The final grade is based on an overall assessment of the assignments and the presentation. - Aid
- All aids allowed
- Marking scale
- 7-point grading scale
- Censorship form
- No external censorship
Several internal examiners.
- Re-exam
The re-exam consists of two parts:
1) A 20 minute oral examination without preparation
2) A (potentially revised) version of the mini-project incl. the short report, to be submitted no later than 3 weeks before the re-exam week.
Criteria for exam assesment
See learning outcome
Course information
- Language
- English
- Course code
- NDAK22005U
- Credit
- 7,5 ECTS
- Level
- Full Degree Master
- Duration
- 1 block
- Placement
- Block 2
- Schedule
- B
- Course capacity
- No limit
The number of seats may be reduced in the late registration period
Study board
- Study Board of Mathematics and Computer Science
Contracting department
- Department of Computer Science
Contracting faculty
- Faculty of Science
Course Coordinators
- Isabelle Augenstein (augenstein@di.ku.dk)
Lecturers
Isabelle Augenstein