Rigorous Systems Research Group (RSRG) Seminar

The AI to Advance Well-being and Society Research Hub at the University of Hong Kong (HKU-AI WiSe), which embeds three HKU-Cambridge interdisciplinary research collaboration platforms, led by Prof. Victor OK Li and Dr. Jacqueline CK Lam, have been addressing societal and healthcare problems using AI and big data technologies, and advocating AI for Social Good. Generative AI (GAI) models, such as ChatGPT, are a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can learn patterns from vast amounts of data to generate outputs mimicking human creation. However, to support sound decision-making, there is a need for a clear understanding of the decision-making processes and the driving factors.  Unfortunately, AI is not yet fully explainable or interpretable, which can limit its usefulness in decision-making. In addition, there are limitations to the accuracy and reliability of GAIs due to their dependence on the quality of the training data and their inability to understand the context of information. In this talk, we survey some of the existing work in explainability/interpretability of AI models, and study how they may be used to improve the interpretability and reliability of future GAIs to make them more useful in decision-making.

Bio:

Victor O.K. Li received SB, SM, EE and ScD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.  Prof. Li is Chair Professor of Information Engineering at the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (EEE) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU).  He was also Cheng Yu-Tung Professor in Sustainable Development from March 2017 to June 2023. He is the Director of the HKU-Cambridge Clean Energy and Environment Research Platform, the HKU-Cambridge AI to Advance Well-being and Society Research Platform, and the HKU-Cambridge AI for Neuro-disease Research Platform, which are interdisciplinary collaborations with Cambridge University. From April to August 2019, and in June 2023, he was Visiting Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Cambridge University. He was the Head of EEE, Assoc. Dean (Research) of Engineering and Managing Director of Versitech Ltd., the technology transfer and commercial arm of HKU. He serves on the board of Sunevision Holdings Ltd., listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He co-founded and serves as Chairman of the Board of award-winning Fano Labs Ltd., an artificial intelligence (AI) company specializing in natural language processing and speech recognition. Previously, he was Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, California, USA, and Director of the USC Communication Sciences Institute. His research interests include AI for social good, with applications in medicine, and clean energy and environment studies.  In Jan 2018, he was awarded a USD 6.4M RGC Theme-based Research Project to develop deep learning techniques for personalized and smart air pollution monitoring and health management.  Sought by government, industry, and academic organizations, he has lectured and consulted extensively internationally. He has received numerous awards, including the PRC Ministry of Education Changjiang Chair Professorship at Tsinghua University, the UK Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Visiting Fellowship in Communications, the Croucher Foundation Senior Research Fellowship, and the Order of the Bronze Bauhinia Star, Government of the HKSAR.  He is a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences, the IEEE, and the HKIE.