The University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Free University of Amsterdam (VU University), the City of Amsterdam and the Ministry of Interior Affairs are opening a new research lab called Civic AI Lab (CAIL). The new lab will focus on developing advanced AI technology that promotes economic and social human rights, such as the right to health, education and employment, while respecting fundamental human rights such as non-discrimination and equality.
The Civic AI Lab is part of ICAI, the national Innovation Centre for AI, and is situated within the larger Amsterdam data science and artificial intelligence ecosystem, which includes Amsterdam Data Science, and AI technology for People, an initiative designed to help the city of Amsterdam develop and deploy responsible data-driven AI technology that serves people working in health business innovation and citizen support.
For our new lab, we are seeking 5 PhD candidates interested in creating intelligent systems that serve people and society. Systems that are fair, that respect differences between people in factors such as language, customs, lifestyle, etc., and that promote inclusive social and cultural environments. In particular we are looking for PhD candidates who value socially-relevant, practice-informed and interdisciplinary FACT* AI research, teaching and outreach in the areas of:
project A: Education (Algorithms for preventing unwanted machine behavior in distribution of educational resources);
project B: Health care (Predictive modeling and analytics in healthcare based on differential and causal fairness measures);
project C: Wellbeing (Improving well-being predictions and intervention through actionable explanations);
project D: Environment (Predicting social, environmental and health inequalities using street imagery and explainable deep vision models);
project E: Mobility (Tackling mobility poverty and inequality with socially aware AI).
What are you going to do?
As part of the Civic AI Lab, all five projects mentioned above focus on the development of AI systems that highlight the inequality of opportunity in society, actively increase the prospect of equality of opportunity and offer the possibility of recourse to enable fair and inclusive outcomes. You are going to:
develop original and novel methods in the fields of machine learning and data science within the context of one of the five research domains;
collaborate with data scientists and other researchers at the University of Amsterdam and the Free University of Amsterdam;
exchange knowledge with data scientists and civil servants at the City of Amsterdam and Ministry of Interior Affairs;
regularly present intermediate research results at international conferences and workshops, and publish them in proceedings and journals;
assist in relevant teaching activities and participate in socio-technical and ethical-legal validation of AI concepts developed by AI start-ups and companies;
complete and defend a PhD thesis within 4 years.
We strongly encourage applications coming from a unique perspective. Tell us how your background fits with the aims of the lab.
See full vacancy here.