Month: October 2022

Highlights from the workshops included:

• Can bias ever be removed in the long term;
• Problems can be introduced when there is human interaction in the machine.
• Do Social Science theories introduce bias?
• How can we use models to our advantage without introducing bias?
• One key takeaway was, “It is not how the model works, but how can we use the model to our advantage?”

The Computational Social Science Hub (CSS Hub) is a collaboration between The Alan Turing Institute (Turing), Lancaster University and Dstl, sitting under the new Defence Centre for AI Research (DCAR). CSS largely focusses on computational approaches to social science – often using large scale data to investigate and model human behaviour and activity. It is made up of social and computer scientists, collaborating on defence and security related problems. After a successful first year, August allowed for a sunny kick off at the Turing Institute in the British library. The team discussed a range of research options to be conducted in the coming years. Our upcoming work covers a range of topics such as Bias, Virtual Reality and Facial Recognition. Additionally, we hope to recruit a PHD student to encourage early researchers into this emerging field.

A primary goal of the CSS Hub is to foster a collaborative community, encouraging work between disciplines. To achieve this we are launching a community group with the Turing, and this regular newsletter focussed on highlighting new CSS work and how it impacts Defence.