Bridging the gap between academia and industry


Nov 30, 2022

An enthusiastic researcher, a senior scientist at Zalando, and an “algorithmic justice consultant”. Meike Zehlike can wear multiple hats and apply her multidisciplinary skills to academia and industry. During her four-month visit to the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH), Zehlike will be working with Fariba Karimi and her team to investigate ethical values and their possible effects on network structures.

 

What are your plans during your stay at CSH?

 

The plan is to combine my knowledge of ethical artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic fairness with CSH’s knowledge of network inequality and try to come up with an understanding of what it needs for networks to have certain definitions of fairness. At the moment, we’re analyzing different effects in network structures and seeing whether we can associate these different effects with different ethical values. At first, we’ll do the analysis, and later we want to run experiments.

 

You’ve got a foot in academia and a foot in the private sector.

Scientists still rarely do this. How did this happen?

 

This is the first time in my life – and I have never thought I would ever say that about a job – that I am in love with working with ethical reasoning in AI. I love it with all my heart! Because I believed there would be no other jobs for me [outside of universities or research institutes], I believed I had to be in academia to work in this field.

 

Then, after I finished my PhD, a job at [the German online fashion giant] Zalando opened up. This is a research position in algorithmic fairness, and an entire team is dedicated to it. At first, I wasn’t sure. However, I became more and more fond of it during the interview process. It turns out to be a really nice job. It’s a different way of working [compared to academia], and the field of ethical AI is younger in industry than it is in academia, and there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

 

From your private sector experience, what lessons have you learned?

 

I learned that if you want more women in academia, you need to change the structure. The way academia works is extremely discriminating against women for different reasons. One of the reasons is what Fariba has showed [in her recent study].

 

And that is something that the private sector is actually doing better. My experience is that big tech companies, as compared to the “old industries”, are much better at understanding how to have a more diverse workforce. Talent dropout is a crucial point [for academia]: focusing only on 50 percent of the population will result in a large amount of talent being lost to industry.

 

In addition, I was surprised to observe – at least at Zalando – the high level of happiness in comparison with academia, where publish or perish is the dogma. It goes without saying that [in industry] you have to deliver and receive performance evaluations. Also, industry seems to be more flexible regarding career paths and supports industry-academia exchange.

 

Could this be a new model for innovation (the exchange between

academia and the private, public and non-governmental sectors)?

 

Totally.

 

Journalists, NGOs, academics have asked lots of questions about ethical AI, and it has taken a while for the industry to say “Okay, we need to address this problem.” This is a very positive development.

 

I won’t be able to apply what I’ll learn at CSH to Zalando now since Zalando is not a social network. However, it might be a potential feature for them in the future. Industry can benefit from understanding the current debate in academia and the questions being addressed. Additionally, I believe that researchers who work in industry also enjoy some academic freedom, since they don’t worry about publishing their work.

 

Could industry offer academic freedom as well?

 

Yes, in the sense that you don’t need to worry about your job. However, you do not have academic freedom in the sense of choosing whatever topic you want to work on. Business needs will still exist. You’ll likely be very business-driven depending on your type of company.

 

In this field, which is so young, it’s crucial that researchers can move between academia and industry. Furthermore, interdisciplinary research is the future: more and more we want to solve real world problems collaboratively. We see this in ethical AI: if you come up with efficiency optimizing algorithms and put them out there to society without consulting social scientists, something terrible may result. This is something we don’t want.

 

This approach to interdisciplinarity should be embraced more in a variety of ways, including from the perspective of industry and academia.

 

 

You describe yourself as an “Algorithmic Justice Consultant.”

What does it mean?

 

As a consultant, I provide ethical guidance on algorithms. One example is my work with IG Metal [the metalworkers’ union in Germany, which is the largest industrial union in Europe]. It’s mostly about raising awareness with works councils, and educating them about what’s happening in ethical AI, and what the problems are with AI systems, particularly when it comes to people analytics.

 

People analytics are being pushed more and more in companies, with the goal of improving (and reducing discrimination, for example) and becoming more efficient (in hiring process). Many of the tools being proposed at the moment make very questionable assumptions about what a good candidate should look like. To educate works councils about that situation, I show examples of what doesn’t work well and why.


Press

Wissenschaft kritisiert fehlenden Datenzugang


ORF, Dec 4, 2023

Spotlight

Nov 30, 2023

From Inequality to Instability

Press

Klima und Geschichte


Die Presse, Nov 4, 2023

Research News

Nov 27, 2023

India's Rice Export Restrictions Echo in West Asia and Africa

Publication

P. Klimek, A. Aykac, S. Thurner

Forensic analysis of the Turkey 2023 presidential election reveals extreme vote swings in remote areas

PLoS ONE 18(11) (2023) e0293239

Publication

M. Pangallo, A. Aleta, et al.

The unequal effects of the health-economy tradeoff during the COVID-19 pandemic

Nature Human Behaviour (2023) DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01747-x

Press

Forscher sagt: „2024 wird das System in den USA möglicherweise zusammenbrechen“


Die Presse, Nov 14, 2023

Publication

A. Nerpel, A. Käsbohrer, C. Walzer, A. Desvars-Larrive

Data on SARS-CoV-2 events in animals: Mind the gap!

One Health 17 (2023) 100653 DOI: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2023.100653

Research News

Nov 28, 2023

Proposals for an Efficient and Effective Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence in Europe

Spotlight

Nov 30, 2023

From Inequality to Instability

Research News

Nov 28, 2023

Proposals for an Efficient and Effective Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence in Europe

Research News

Nov 27, 2023

India's Rice Export Restrictions Echo in West Asia and Africa

Research News

Nov 23, 2023

Study Identifies Numerous Connections in Cybercrime Cases

Press

Nov 17, 2023

Invitation to media chat by Supply Chain Intelligence Institute Austria (ASCII)

Research News

Nov 15, 2023

Data Gap in SARS-CoV-2 Cases in Animals

News

Nov 14, 2023

FTX Collapse: New Method for Assessing the Solvency of Cryptocurrency Exchanges

People

Nov 10, 2023

Double Honors for CSH Researchers

News

Nov 13, 2023

New scientific methods for analyzing criminal careers

People

Nov 6, 2023

A letter to my dear friend Constantino

News

Oct 19, 2023

It's high time for alliances to ensure supply chain security

News

Oct 17, 2023

Experts discuss sustainable phosphorus use and global food security

Press

Wissenschaft kritisiert fehlenden Datenzugang


ORF, Dec 4, 2023

Press

Forscher sagt: „2024 wird das System in den USA möglicherweise zusammenbrechen“


Die Presse, Nov 14, 2023

Press

Klima und Geschichte


Die Presse, Nov 4, 2023

Press

Daten mit Gewicht: Analysen von Lieferketten zeigen auch Steuerlücken


Die Presse, Oct 20, 2023

Press

Krypto-Forscher über DeFi: “Würde von De-facto-Centralized-Finance sprechen”


brutkasten, Oct 27, 2023

Press

Scientists say Western sanctions against China ‘toothless’ without better supply chain data


South China Morning Post, Oct 20, 2023

Press

Climate change has toppled some civilizations but not others. Why?


Grist, Oct 16, 2023

Press

scobel - Emergenz: Das verborgene Prinzip des Lebens


3sat, Oct 12, 2023

Press

Wenn die Kryptofalle zuschnappt


Kurier, Oct 17, 2023

Press

Chinas E-Autos kommen, und Europa darf nicht naiv sein


Der Standard, Oct 9, 2023

Press

GOP candidates' proposals to attack drug cartels is the wrong approach, Mexican researchers say


NBC News, Oct 6, 2023

Publication

P. Klimek, A. Aykac, S. Thurner

Forensic analysis of the Turkey 2023 presidential election reveals extreme vote swings in remote areas

PLoS ONE 18(11) (2023) e0293239

Publication

M. Pangallo, A. Aleta, et al.

The unequal effects of the health-economy tradeoff during the COVID-19 pandemic

Nature Human Behaviour (2023) DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01747-x

Publication

A. Nerpel, A. Käsbohrer, C. Walzer, A. Desvars-Larrive

Data on SARS-CoV-2 events in animals: Mind the gap!

One Health 17 (2023) 100653 DOI: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2023.100653

Publication

G. Heiler, T. Pham, J. Korbel, J. Wachs, S. Thurner

A large-scale empirical investigation of specialization in criminal career

Scientific Reports 13 (2023) 17160

Publication

A. Pichler, C. Diem, et al.

Building an alliance to map global supply networks: New firm-level data can inform policy-making

Science 382(6668) (2023) 270-272.

Publication

R. Prieto-Curiel, G. M. Capedelli, A. Hope

Reducing cartel recruitment is the only way to lower violence in Mexico

Science 381(6664) (2023) 1312-1316

Publication

B. Méro, A. Borsos, et al.

A High-Resolution, Data-Driven Agent-Based Model of the Housing Market

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (2023) 104738

Publication

S. Juhász, G. Pintér, et al.

Amenity complexity and urban locations of socio-economic mixing

EPJ Data Science 12 (2023) 34

Publication

R. Hanel, S. Thurner

Equivalence of information production and generalised entropies in complex processes

PLOS ONE 18(9) (2023) e0290695

Publication

K. Frenken, F. Neffke, A. van Dam

Capabilities, institutions and regional economic development: a proposed synthesis

Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (2023) rsad021

Publication

G. Orlandi, D. Hoyer, et al.

Structural-demographic analysis of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) collapse in China

PLoS ONE 18(8) (2023) e0289748

Publication

N. Kushwaha, E.D. Lee

Discovering the mesoscale for chains of conflict

PNAS Nexus 2(7) (2023) pgad228