Matthew Kearney was drawn to MIT by the culture of its cross-country team. Growing up in Austin, Texas, he loved spending time outdoors and playing soccer, but by highschool running had change into his primary sport. While taking a look at colleges, he wanted to seek out a spot with each strong academics and a robust team community. After an official visit with the cross-country team, he knew MIT was the place for him.
“It’s been truly a defining a part of my MIT experience,” says Kearney. “I really like how quirky and fun and peculiar in one of the simplest ways everyone seems to be, and that atmosphere of doing things somewhat bit in a different way. That’s what sold me beyond the apparent academic and research reasons.”
Now a senior, and a team captain, Kearney has made probably the most of his athletic and academic experiences. He arrived at MIT expecting to major in electrical engineering and computer science but fell in love with philosophy after taking 24.02 (Moral Problems and the Good Life). He’s majoring in each while also completing a master’s degree in computer science and engineering.
“The a part of philosophy that interests me is desirous about how we would like to live our lives as people, what matters to us, what’s helpful to us, and the way can we do it in a way that respects the values that matter to other people,” says Kearney. “I’ve really enjoyed more abstract but purposeful pondering to enrich the technical rigor that’s gone on with my computer science major.”
Kearney’s interests intersect in the sector of artificial intelligence ethics, where he hopes to leverage his interdisciplinary education to thoughtfully examine and design artificial intelligence systems. Following graduation, he’ll pursue a DPhil in computer science at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
“There’s not a variety of dialogue that goes from the abstract tenets of ethical philosophy all of the option to the sensible constructing of an AI tool to unravel an issue,” says Kearney. “In my DPhil, I need to ask how we will start off with the goal of constructing certain ethical principles into AI, and the way can we bring that down layers of abstraction until we understand what technical tools we will construct to assist realize those goals.”
Outside of the classroom, Kearney has been excelling as well. The cross-country team captured a national title in the autumn — not only the primary in program history but additionally the primary NCAA team championship by an MIT athletic team — with Kearney also picking up individual All-American honors.
Human-centered AI design
Kearney is currently working on two research efforts. The primary is a project with the Human Systems Lab, where he’s designing downscaling methods to use to climate data. Most models are on a world scale, but having the ability to predict how local regions will likely be affected could help guide effective policy and supply insight to people living within the region.
For his master’s thesis, Kearney helps to develop a deeper understanding of enormous language models, that are used to construct tools reminiscent of ChatGPT. Beyond gaining the technical knowledge, Kearney can be at all times desirous about the moral ramifications of those tools.
“Under the hood, people aren’t entirely sure why these models make sure decisions,” says Kearney. “They understand mathematically how it really works, but they don’t know why models make individual decisions. The main target of my research has been trying to know where concepts are positioned within the networks, and the way are they recognized and transformed throughout the network. Then we will start to know each the fairness and ethical questions on the model.”
At a high level, Kearney is concerned with picking apart these models to know them from all angles. He recognizes the immense potential artificial intelligence has to affect many various fields, but he also recognizes the necessity to wield technology thoughtfully. This insight was sparked by the category 6.882 (Ethical Machine Learning in Human Deployments), a special subject offered by Assistant Professor Marzyeh Ghassemi in spring 2022.
“My technical education taught me that any problem may be solved if we throw enough engineering and technology at it,” says Kearney, adding that he believes he and lots of others have blind spots of their technical research. “This class really helped me exit that headspace to see that these problems can only be solved through social-centered, or economic, or political approaches. We’d like to take into consideration how we will use tools from other disciplines to be thoughtful about how we’re using those technologies.”
Kearney sees a chance for his work to make an impact in a variety of areas, from health care to bank loans.
“In application areas where we all know there may be already bias built into the models systemically, they’re vulnerable to it carrying over into model decisions which can be made,” says Kearney. “Nevertheless, these models are going to proceed for use and made, and it’s vital that they’re made in the best way that one, we will understand how they’re actually working, and two, we will guarantee fairer outcomes.”
Kearney finds computer science and philosophy to be in constant dialogue with one another, and is inspired by the pioneers in the sector of AI ethics to proceed constructing deliberate systems that make a positive impact on the world.
As he wraps up his time at MIT, Kearney can be looking forward to closing out his final track seasons strong, following the success of the cross-country team.
“This fall was the closest and most tight-knit the team’s ever been,” says Kearney. “We now have such incredible talent in coaching this yr, and already so many more national qualifiers than we’ve ever had. I’m excited to see what happens with it and to exit with a bang.”