Margaret Mitchell (scientist) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Margaret Mitchell
|
|
|---|---|
Mitchell in 2022
|
|
| Born |
United States
|
| Other names | Shmargaret Shmitchell |
| Alma mater | University of Aberdeen (PhD in Computer Science) University of Washington (MSc in Computational Linguistics) |
| Known for | Algorithmic bias Fairness in machine learning Computer vision Natural language processing |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | Google Microsoft Research Johns Hopkins University |
| Thesis | Generating Reference to Visible Objects (2012) |
Margaret Mitchell is a computer scientist who works to make sure that AI is fair and doesn't have hidden biases. She is famous for helping to remove unfairness from computer programs that learn, called machine learning models. She also helps make sure these programs clearly explain how they are meant to be used.
Contents
Learning and School
Margaret Mitchell studied linguistics at Reed College in Oregon, finishing in 2005. Linguistics is the study of language. After working as a research assistant for two years, she earned a Master's degree in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington in 2009. This field combines language and computers.
She then went to the University of Aberdeen for her PhD. She wrote her doctoral paper on how computers can describe things they see. She finished her PhD in 2013.
Her Work and Discoveries
Margaret Mitchell is best known for her work on making machine learning fair and fixing algorithmic bias. Algorithmic bias happens when computer programs make unfair decisions because of the data they learned from.
Making AI Fair
Mitchell helped create "Model Cards." These are like report cards for AI models. They explain what the model does, how it was built, and any possible problems it might have. This helps people understand and trust AI more. She also found ways to test AI programs to make sure they treat everyone fairly.
Working at Top Tech Companies
In 2012, Mitchell worked as a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. The next year, in 2013, she joined Microsoft Research. At Microsoft, she led a project called Seeing AI. This is a special app that helps people who can't see well by describing texts and images out loud.
In 2016, she became a senior research scientist at Google. There, she helped start and lead the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team. This team worked to make sure AI was developed in a responsible way. In 2018, she represented Google in the Partnership on AI, a group that works on the future of AI.
In February 2018, she gave a TED talk. She spoke about how we can build AI to help people, not harm them.
Advocating for Responsible AI
Margaret Mitchell was a strong supporter of diversity at Google. She also shared concerns about how research was handled at the company. After some disagreements about research and data, she left Google in January 2021.
Later in 2021, she joined Hugging Face, an AI company that focuses on making AI tools open and accessible.
Leading the Way
Mitchell also helped start Widening NLP. This group works to bring more women and minority groups into the field of natural language processing. Natural language processing is about teaching computers to understand human language. This group is part of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
