Semi-finalist 2025
| Submitted by: | Rabeya Bosri |
| Department: | Computing Science |
| Faculty: | Science |
This image illustrates the delicate balancing act that Machine Learning systems encounter in real-world deployment. The performer represents an ML model, while the unicycle beneath them symbolizes the unstable foundation of real-world data, which is often messy and full of implicit biases. The flames on either side represent the conflicting needs for privacy and fairness in ML; both are important but can often clash with each other. Ensuring a model is fair for everyone can sometimes put user privacy at risk. Balancing on a unicycle while holding fire represents the main challenge of my research: finding the proper middle ground between privacy, fairness, and how useful the model is. The surrounding darkness suggests the constant uncertainty of adversarial threats and the unpredictable consequences of design decisions in high-stakes ML applications such as healthcare and criminal justice.
Was your image created using Generative AI?
No.
How was your image created?
I captured this photo on my model phone (Google Pixel 8) and made some post-processing (doing some colour correction) in a mobile app named Snapseed.
Where is the image located?
The image was taken at the Fringe Festival Edmonton, August 20, 2024.