Friday, 22nd November - 11am Michael Hedderich : Seminar

Title: Human Factors in the Development of AI Models

Abstract: 

Human factors, while often overlooked, play crucial roles in the development of NLP and AI models - from the way we collect human data or inputs to how humans verify and control the resulting model behavior. In this talk, I’ll approach the topic of model behavior from two key perspectives. On the human-centric side, I’ll discuss a project where teachers were empowered to create their own LLM-based chatbots, offering valuable insights into how educators wish to control such technologies, particularly in the context of cyberbullying education. On the technological side, I’ll present a method for generating global descriptions of NLP model behavior, leveraging ideas from data mining. This approach helps model developers, e.g., to better understand their models’ limitations and improve their failure points.

Bio:

Michael A. Hedderich is a Junior Research Group Leader (a German equivalent to assistant professor) at Munich University (LMU) and the Munich Center for Machine Learning. His research covers the intersection of machine learning, natural language processing and human-computer interaction. He is interested in developing new technology as well as building bridges from AI to other interested fields. To this end, his work includes technical and foundational methods, human-centered approaches, and applications in fields ranging from archeology to medical research. 

Before moving to LMU Munich, Michael completed his PhD in ML and NLP at Saarland University (Germany) and then joined the HCI groups of Antti Oulasvirta at Aalto University (Finland) and Qian Yang at Cornell (USA).

Picture: https://michael-hedderich.de/assets/img/IMG_5220_cut-out_circle_low-qual.jpg