DSI Director keynotes One World Symposium 2020
Full video of his talk here
Abstract of talk: Recent progress in machine learning provides us with many potentially effective tools to learn from datasets of ever-increasing sizes and make useful predictions. How do we know that these tools can be trusted in critical and highly-sensitive domains? If a learning algorithm predicts the GPA of a prospective college applicant, what guarantees do we have concerning the accuracy of this prediction? How do we know that it is not biased against certain groups of applicants? To address questions of this kind, this talk reviews a wonderful field of research known under the name of conformal inference/prediction, pioneered by Vladimir Vovk and his colleagues 20 years ago. After reviewing some of the basic ideas underlying distribution-free predictive inference, we shall survey recent progress in the field touching upon several issues: (1) efficiency: how can we provide tighter predictions?, (2) data-reuse: what do we do when data is scarce? (3) algorithmic fairness: how do we make sure that learned models apply to individuals in an equitable manner?, and (4) causal inference: can we predict the counterfactual response to a treatment given that the patient was not treated?
