College of Science

Colloquium - Spring 2023

Upcoming

Dr. Peri Shereen

April 15, 2024

12:00 - 1:15pm, Chapman S219

Details coming soon!

Recent

Get Off The Hype Train: Why Using Neural Networks Can Be Very Risky

March 4, 2024

12:00 - 1:15pm, Chapman S219

Neural networks are the primary technology supporting many recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), such as synthetic media generation, computer vision, and language models. When people observe a A.I. system performing a task with near-human competency, they often assume that the A.I. system and the neural network underlying it perceive the environment and make decisions as humans do. Unfortunately, neural networks work very differently than human perception and reasoning, which can make it difficult to anticipate their failures. In this research, we develop a new method for creating so-called adversarial examples, where neural networks fail at exceedingly easy tasks. These can be used to inform which applications are appropriate for the use of neural networks, and they also encourage decision makers to consider alternatives in applications with severe consequences of failure. Though adversarial examples are well studied in computer vision, our work is the first to develop adversarial examples for audio processing, which is an important application area for the US Navy.

Dr. Robert L Bassett is an Assistant Professor of Operations Research at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research focuses on mathematical programming applied to problems in statistics and machine learning, with an emphasis on defense applications. He received a PhD in Mathematics from UC Davis in 2018, and a BS in Mathematics from Cal State Bakersfield in 2013. Before joining NPS, Dr. Bassett worked as a research mathematician with the National Security Agency and as a system analyst with Sandia National Laboratories.