The Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE) research group at Microsoft Research New York City is looking for a Post Doc Researcher to start July 2024: https://jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/job/1667778/Post-Doc-Researcher... We will begin to review applications for the position on January 3, 2024.
This two-year position is an ideal opportunity for an emerging scholar whose work focuses on the social implications of machine learning and AI.
As a Postdoctoral Researcher, you will define your own research agenda, driving forward an effective program of basic, fundamental, and applied research. You will also have the opportunity to collaborate with members of the research group, including Solon Barocas, Alexandra Chouldechova, Kate Crawford, Hal Daumé, Miro Dudík, Hanna Wallach, and Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, as well as others in the New York City lab and other Microsoft Research labs.
Microsoft Research offers an exhilarating and supportive environment for cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research, both theoretical and applied, with access to an extraordinary diversity of data sources, an open publications policy, and close links to top academic institutions around the world. Additionally, the position offers unique opportunities to engage with the broader responsible AI (RAI) ecosystem within Microsoft, including product teams, AI policy teams, and RAI practitioners. We seek applicants with a demonstrated interest in FATE-related topics and a desire to work in a highly interdisciplinary environment that includes researchers from computer science, statistics, the social sciences, the humanities, and other fields. Successful candidates will also have an established research track record, evidenced by notable journal or conference publications and broader contributions to the research community.
We will consider candidates with a background in a technical field such as computer science (especially AI, machine learning, NLP, and computer vision), statistics, economics, and decision sciences as well as candidates with a socio-technical orientation, such as those in information science, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, media studies, law, and related fields.
We are especially interested in candidates who would like to pursue research aligned with one or more of the following themes:
• Computational, statistical, and sociotechnical approaches to fairness assessment: Data collection, experimental design, sample-efficient statistical methods, measurement, and visualization for fairness assessment; mixed-methods approaches, including participatory methods, for measuring fairness-related harms caused by AI and human-AI systems.
• Human-centered AI transparency: Explanation, evaluation, and uncertainty communication approaches to improve stakeholder understanding of AI models or systems; transparency approaches for improving human control, autonomy, oversight, and mitigation of AI harms; transparency in human-AI collaboration.
• Institutional, organizational, and economic challenges of AI development, deployment, and use: Challenges of translating real-world problems into machine learning tasks and integrating AI with existing institutional processes; incentives for and resistance to contributing training data; impacts of generative AI on the cultural industries; environmental impacts of generative AI systems.
• AI law and policy; AI for policymaking and regulation: How existing laws and policies apply to AI, and where new regulations might be necessary; AI as a tool for effective policymaking, regulation, and enforcement. • Responsible AI in practice: Turning RAI principles into policies and practices; translating RAI research into practice; navigating organizational dynamics, competing incentives, and decision-making under uncertainty.
Candidates must have completed their PhD, including submission of their dissertation, prior to the start of the position (i.e., dissertation submitted and degree preferably conferred by July 2024). We encourage candidates with tenure-track job offers from other institutions to apply, provided they are able to defer their start date by at least one year to accept our position.
To be assured of full consideration, all application materials, including reference letters, need to be received by January 3, 2024. Applications received after that date may be considered until the position is filled.
This role is not to exceed two years.