Alexandra Olteanu

Kaitlyn Zhou, Su Lin Blodgett, Adam Trischler et al. · microsoft-research

There are many ways to express similar things in text, which makes evaluating natural language generation (NLG) systems difficult. Compounding this difficulty is the need to assess varying quality criteria depending on the deployment setting. While the landscape of NLG evaluation has been well-mapped, practitioners' goals, assumptions, and constraints -- which inform decisions about what, when, and how to evaluate -- are often partially or implicitly stated, or not stated at all. Combining a formative semi-structured interview study of NLG practitioners (N=18) with a survey study of a broader sample of practitioners (N=61), we surface goals, community practices, assumptions, and constraints that shape NLG evaluations, examining their implications and how they embody ethical considerations.

Shreya Chowdhary, Anna Kawakami, Mary L. Gray et al. · cmu

Sensing technologies deployed in the workplace can unobtrusively collect detailed data about individual activities and group interactions that are otherwise difficult to capture. A hopeful application of these technologies is that they can help businesses and workers optimize productivity and wellbeing. However, given the workplace's inherent and structural power dynamics, the prevalent approach of accepting tacit compliance to monitor work activities rather than seeking workers' meaningful consent raises privacy and ethical concerns. This paper unpacks the challenges workers face when consenting to workplace wellbeing technologies. Using a hypothetical case to prompt reflection among six multi-stakeholder focus groups involving 15 participants, we explored participants' expectations and capacity to consent to these technologies. We sketched possible interventions that could better support meaningful consent to workplace wellbeing technologies by drawing on critical computing and feminist scholarship -- which reframes consent from a purely individual choice to a structural condition experienced at the individual level that needs to be freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific (FRIES). The focus groups revealed how workers are vulnerable to "meaningless" consent -- as they may be subject to power dynamics that minimize their ability to withhold consent and may thus experience an erosion of autonomy, also undermining the value of data gathered in the name of "wellbeing." To meaningfully consent, participants wanted changes to the technology and to the policies and practices surrounding the technology. Our mapping of what prevents workers from meaningfully consenting to workplace wellbeing technologies (challenges) and what they require to do so (interventions) illustrates how the lack of meaningful consent is a structural problem requiring socio-technical solutions.

Maurice Jakesch, Zana Buçinca, Saleema Amershi et al. · harvard

Private companies, public sector organizations, and academic groups have outlined ethical values they consider important for responsible artificial intelligence technologies. While their recommendations converge on a set of central values, little is known about the values a more representative public would find important for the AI technologies they interact with and might be affected by. We conducted a survey examining how individuals perceive and prioritize responsible AI values across three groups: a representative sample of the US population (N=743), a sample of crowdworkers (N=755), and a sample of AI practitioners (N=175). Our results empirically confirm a common concern: AI practitioners' value priorities differ from those of the general public. Compared to the US-representative sample, AI practitioners appear to consider responsible AI values as less important and emphasize a different set of values. In contrast, self-identified women and black respondents found responsible AI values more important than other groups. Surprisingly, more liberal-leaning participants, rather than participants reporting experiences with discrimination, were more likely to prioritize fairness than other groups. Our findings highlight the importance of paying attention to who gets to define responsible AI.

Li Lucy, Su Lin Blodgett, Milad Shokouhi et al. · microsoft-research

Fairness-related assumptions about what constitute appropriate NLG system behaviors range from invariance, where systems are expected to behave identically for social groups, to adaptation, where behaviors should instead vary across them. To illuminate tensions around invariance and adaptation, we conduct five case studies, in which we perturb different types of identity-related language features (names, roles, locations, dialect, and style) in NLG system inputs. Through these cases studies, we examine people's expectations of system behaviors, and surface potential caveats of these contrasting yet commonly held assumptions. We find that motivations for adaptation include social norms, cultural differences, feature-specific information, and accommodation; in contrast, motivations for invariance include perspectives that favor prescriptivism, view adaptation as unnecessary or too difficult for NLG systems to do appropriately, and are wary of false assumptions. Our findings highlight open challenges around what constitute "fair" or "good" NLG system behaviors.

Yu Lu Liu, Meng Cao, Su Lin Blodgett et al. · microsoft-research

AI and NLP publication venues have increasingly encouraged researchers to reflect on possible ethical considerations, adverse impacts, and other responsible AI issues their work might engender. However, for specific NLP tasks our understanding of how prevalent such issues are, or when and why these issues are likely to arise, remains limited. Focusing on text summarization -- a common NLP task largely overlooked by the responsible AI community -- we examine research and reporting practices in the current literature. We conduct a multi-round qualitative analysis of 333 summarization papers from the ACL Anthology published between 2020-2022. We focus on how, which, and when responsible AI issues are covered, which relevant stakeholders are considered, and mismatches between stated and realized research goals. We also discuss current evaluation practices and consider how authors discuss the limitations of both prior work and their own work. Overall, we find that relatively few papers engage with possible stakeholders or contexts of use, which limits their consideration of potential downstream adverse impacts or other responsible AI issues. Based on our findings, we make recommendations on concrete practices and research directions.

Mohammad Tahaei, Marios Constantinides, Daniele Quercia et al.

In recent years, the CHI community has seen significant growth in research on Human-Centered Responsible Artificial Intelligence. While different research communities may use different terminology to discuss similar topics, all of this work is ultimately aimed at developing AI that benefits humanity while being grounded in human rights and ethics, and reducing the potential harms of AI. In this special interest group, we aim to bring together researchers from academia and industry interested in these topics to map current and future research trends to advance this important area of research by fostering collaboration and sharing ideas.

Ian Porada, Alexandra Olteanu, Kaheer Suleman et al. · mila

It is increasingly common to evaluate the same coreference resolution (CR) model on multiple datasets. Do these multi-dataset evaluations allow us to draw meaningful conclusions about model generalization? Or, do they rather reflect the idiosyncrasies of a particular experimental setup (e.g., the specific datasets used)? To study this, we view evaluation through the lens of measurement modeling, a framework commonly used in the social sciences for analyzing the validity of measurements. By taking this perspective, we show how multi-dataset evaluations risk conflating different factors concerning what, precisely, is being measured. This in turn makes it difficult to draw more generalizable conclusions from these evaluations. For instance, we show that across seven datasets, measurements intended to reflect CR model generalization are often correlated with differences in both how coreference is defined and how it is operationalized; this limits our ability to draw conclusions regarding the ability of CR models to generalize across any singular dimension. We believe the measurement modeling framework provides the needed vocabulary for discussing challenges surrounding what is actually being measured by CR evaluations.

Shalaleh Rismani, Su Lin Blodgett, Q. Vera Liao et al. · microsoft-research

AI-based writing assistants are ubiquitous, yet little is known about how users' mental models shape their use. We examine two types of mental models -- functional or related to what the system does, and structural or related to how the system works -- and how they affect control behavior -- how users request, accept, or edit AI suggestions as they write -- and writing outcomes. We primed participants ($N = 48$) with different system descriptions to induce these mental models before asking them to complete a cover letter writing task using a writing assistant that occasionally offered preconfigured ungrammatical suggestions to test whether the mental models affected participants' critical oversight. We find that while participants in the structural mental model condition demonstrate a better understanding of the system, this can have a backfiring effect: while these participants judged the system as more usable, they also produced letters with more grammatical errors, highlighting a complex relationship between system understanding, trust, and control in contexts that require user oversight of error-prone AI outputs.

Akshatha Arodi, Martin Pömsl, Kaheer Suleman et al.

Many state-of-the-art natural language understanding (NLU) models are based on pretrained neural language models. These models often make inferences using information from multiple sources. An important class of such inferences are those that require both background knowledge, presumably contained in a model's pretrained parameters, and instance-specific information that is supplied at inference time. However, the integration and reasoning abilities of NLU models in the presence of multiple knowledge sources have been largely understudied. In this work, we propose a test suite of coreference resolution subtasks that require reasoning over multiple facts. These subtasks differ in terms of which knowledge sources contain the relevant facts. We also introduce subtasks where knowledge is present only at inference time using fictional knowledge. We evaluate state-of-the-art coreference resolution models on our dataset. Our results indicate that several models struggle to reason on-the-fly over knowledge observed both at pretrain time and at inference time. However, with task-specific training, a subset of models demonstrates the ability to integrate certain knowledge types from multiple sources. Still, even the best performing models seem to have difficulties with reliably integrating knowledge presented only at inference time.

Alexandra Olteanu, Michael Ekstrand, Carlos Castillo et al.

All types of research, development, and policy work can have unintended, adverse consequences - work in responsible artificial intelligence (RAI), ethical AI, or ethics in AI is no exception.

Myra Cheng, Alicia DeVrio, Lisa Egede et al. · cmu, microsoft-research

Many state-of-the-art generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly prone to anthropomorphic behaviors, i.e., to generating outputs that are perceived to be human-like. While this has led to scholars increasingly raising concerns about possible negative impacts such anthropomorphic AI systems can give rise to, anthropomorphism in AI development, deployment, and use remains vastly overlooked, understudied, and underspecified. In this perspective, we argue that we cannot thoroughly map the social impacts of generative AI without mapping the social impacts of anthropomorphic AI, and outline a call to action.

Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang, Q. Vera Liao, Su Lin Blodgett et al. · microsoft-research

Given the rising proliferation and diversity of AI writing assistance tools, especially those powered by large language models (LLMs), both writers and readers may have concerns about the impact of these tools on the authenticity of writing work. We examine whether and how writers want to preserve their authentic voice when co-writing with AI tools and whether personalization of AI writing support could help achieve this goal. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 professional writers, during which they co-wrote with both personalized and non-personalized AI writing-support tools. We supplemented writers' perspectives with opinions from 30 avid readers about the written work co-produced with AI collected through an online survey. Our findings illuminate conceptions of authenticity in human-AI co-creation, which focus more on the process and experience of constructing creators' authentic selves. While writers reacted positively to personalized AI writing tools, they believed the form of personalization needs to target writers' growth and go beyond the phase of text production. Overall, readers' responses showed less concern about human-AI co-writing. Readers could not distinguish AI-assisted work, personalized or not, from writers' solo-written work and showed positive attitudes toward writers experimenting with new technology for creative writing.

Myra Cheng, Su Lin Blodgett, Alicia DeVrio et al. · cmu, microsoft-research

As text generation systems' outputs are increasingly anthropomorphic -- perceived as human-like -- scholars have also increasingly raised concerns about how such outputs can lead to harmful outcomes, such as users over-relying or developing emotional dependence on these systems. How to intervene on such system outputs to mitigate anthropomorphic behaviors and their attendant harmful outcomes, however, remains understudied. With this work, we aim to provide empirical and theoretical grounding for developing such interventions. To do so, we compile an inventory of interventions grounded both in prior literature and a crowdsourcing study where participants edited system outputs to make them less human-like. Drawing on this inventory, we also develop a conceptual framework to help characterize the landscape of possible interventions, articulate distinctions between different types of interventions, and provide a theoretical basis for evaluating the effectiveness of different interventions.

Alicia DeVrio, Myra Cheng, Lisa Egede et al. · cmu, microsoft-research

Recent attention to anthropomorphism -- the attribution of human-like qualities to non-human objects or entities -- of language technologies like LLMs has sparked renewed discussions about potential negative impacts of anthropomorphism. To productively discuss the impacts of this anthropomorphism and in what contexts it is appropriate, we need a shared vocabulary for the vast variety of ways that language can be anthropomorphic. In this work, we draw on existing literature and analyze empirical cases of user interactions with language technologies to develop a taxonomy of textual expressions that can contribute to anthropomorphism. We highlight challenges and tensions involved in understanding linguistic anthropomorphism, such as how all language is fundamentally human and how efforts to characterize and shift perceptions of humanness in machines can also dehumanize certain humans. We discuss ways that our taxonomy supports more precise and effective discussions of and decisions about anthropomorphism of language technologies.

Emma Harvey, Emily Sheng, Su Lin Blodgett et al. · microsoft-research

The NLP research community has made publicly available numerous instruments for measuring representational harms caused by large language model (LLM)-based systems. These instruments have taken the form of datasets, metrics, tools, and more. In this paper, we examine the extent to which such instruments meet the needs of practitioners tasked with evaluating LLM-based systems. Via semi-structured interviews with 12 such practitioners, we find that practitioners are often unable to use publicly available instruments for measuring representational harms. We identify two types of challenges. In some cases, instruments are not useful because they do not meaningfully measure what practitioners seek to measure or are otherwise misaligned with practitioner needs. In other cases, instruments - even useful instruments - are not used by practitioners due to practical and institutional barriers impeding their uptake. Drawing on measurement theory and pragmatic measurement, we provide recommendations for addressing these challenges to better meet practitioner needs.

Alexandra Olteanu, Su Lin Blodgett, Agathe Balayn et al. · microsoft-research

In AI research and practice, rigor remains largely understood in terms of methodological rigor -- such as whether mathematical, statistical, or computational methods are correctly applied. We argue that this narrow conception of rigor has contributed to the concerns raised by the responsible AI community, including overblown claims about AI capabilities. Our position is that a broader conception of what rigorous AI research and practice should entail is needed. We believe such a conception -- in addition to a more expansive understanding of (1) methodological rigor -- should include aspects related to (2) what background knowledge informs what to work on (epistemic rigor); (3) how disciplinary, community, or personal norms, standards, or beliefs influence the work (normative rigor); (4) how clearly articulated the theoretical constructs under use are (conceptual rigor); (5) what is reported and how (reporting rigor); and (6) how well-supported the inferences from existing evidence are (interpretative rigor). In doing so, we also aim to provide useful language and a framework for much-needed dialogue about the AI community's work by researchers, policymakers, journalists, and other stakeholders.

Yu Lu Liu, Su Lin Blodgett, Jackie Chi Kit Cheung et al.

Benchmarking is seen as critical to assessing progress in NLP. However, creating a benchmark involves many design decisions (e.g., which datasets to include, which metrics to use) that often rely on tacit, untested assumptions about what the benchmark is intended to measure or is actually measuring. There is currently no principled way of analyzing these decisions and how they impact the validity of the benchmark's measurements. To address this gap, we draw on evidence-centered design in educational assessments and propose Evidence-Centered Benchmark Design (ECBD), a framework which formalizes the benchmark design process into five modules. ECBD specifies the role each module plays in helping practitioners collect evidence about capabilities of interest. Specifically, each module requires benchmark designers to describe, justify, and support benchmark design choices -- e.g., clearly specifying the capabilities the benchmark aims to measure or how evidence about those capabilities is collected from model responses. To demonstrate the use of ECBD, we conduct case studies with three benchmarks: BoolQ, SuperGLUE, and HELM. Our analysis reveals common trends in benchmark design and documentation that could threaten the validity of benchmarks' measurements.

Timothy J. Hazen, Alexandra Olteanu, Gabriella Kazai et al.

Past research shows that users benefit from systems that support them in their writing and exploration tasks. The autosuggestion feature of Web search engines is an example of such a system: It helps users in formulating their queries by offering a list of suggestions as they type. Autosuggestions are typically generated by machine learning (ML) systems trained on a corpus of search logs and document representations. Such automated methods can become prone to issues that result in problematic suggestions that are biased, racist, sexist or in other ways inappropriate. While current search engines have become increasingly proficient at suppressing such problematic suggestions, there are still persistent issues that remain. In this paper, we reflect on past efforts and on why certain issues still linger by covering explored solutions along a prototypical pipeline for identifying, detecting, and addressing problematic autosuggestions. To showcase their complexity, we discuss several dimensions of problematic suggestions, difficult issues along the pipeline, and why our discussion applies to the increasing number of applications beyond web search that implement similar textual suggestion features. By outlining persistent social and technical challenges in moderating web search suggestions, we provide a renewed call for action.

Alexandra Olteanu, Jean Garcia-Gathright, Maarten de Rijke et al.

The proceedings list for the program of FACTS-IR 2019, the Workshop on Fairness, Accountability, Confidentiality, Transparency, and Safety in Information Retrieval held at SIGIR 2019.

Matthew Arnold, Rachel K. E. Bellamy, Michael Hind et al.

Accuracy is an important concern for suppliers of artificial intelligence (AI) services, but considerations beyond accuracy, such as safety (which includes fairness and explainability), security, and provenance, are also critical elements to engender consumers' trust in a service. Many industries use transparent, standardized, but often not legally required documents called supplier's declarations of conformity (SDoCs) to describe the lineage of a product along with the safety and performance testing it has undergone. SDoCs may be considered multi-dimensional fact sheets that capture and quantify various aspects of the product and its development to make it worthy of consumers' trust. Inspired by this practice, we propose FactSheets to help increase trust in AI services. We envision such documents to contain purpose, performance, safety, security, and provenance information to be completed by AI service providers for examination by consumers. We suggest a comprehensive set of declaration items tailored to AI and provide examples for two fictitious AI services in the appendix of the paper.