Overview
This webpage provides information for the informal Machine Learning (ML) and Economics group at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford, coordinated by Maximilian Kasy.
The goal of this group is to discuss research and develop a common research agenda at the intersection of ML and economics. The focus is on conceptual and methodological contributions of economics to ML and of ML to economics. These two fields share a common language in the frameworks of optimization, probability, and decision theory. Economics has much to contribute to ML with its considerations of multiple agents, inequality and conflicting interests, and private information. ML has much to contribute to economics with its insights on supervised and active learning, considerations of non-traditional data types, and adaptive decision-making. Special emphasis will be put on the social impact of ML, and on non-commercial applications of ML.
Activities
Upcoming
- May 20-22, 2024: Workshop Economic Analyses of Science.
- Bi-weekly reading and discussion group on ML and economics, meeting in even weeks of term.
- Youtube channel of workshops and discussions.
Previous
- In May 2023, we organized a workshop on Social foundations for statistics and machine learning, featuring tutorials and frontier talks, as well as a panel discussion. All talks are available on Youtube.
- In June 2022, we organized a small cross-departmental workshop on ML and economics, with presentations of ongoing work and discussants, as well as a keynote by Michael Jordan from UC Berkeley. Information on this workshop can be found at Machine Learning and Economics Jamboree 2022.
- I started teaching a new MPhil course on the foundations of ML for economists in HT 2022.
All faculty, post-docs, and doctoral students are invited to audit this course and participate in discussions.
Syllabus, slides and readers can be found here: Foundations of Machine Learning - In April 2021, we organized a conference on Machine learning and economic inequality. Recordings of the talks are available on Youtube.
Reading and discussion group
Michaelmas term 2023
- Time: 2:30pm, Tuesdays in even weeks. (That is: 17 Oct, 31 Oct, 14 Nov, 28 Nov)
- Location: SR A, Manor Road Building (There will be coffee and pastries!)
- For those who cannot make in person, please join via Zoom.
Topic: Large Language Models.
- W2: Foundations (Neural networks and natural language processing)
Chapters 6,7, and 9 of Speech and Language Processing
Presenter: James Dufy. Slides - W4: Foundations (Transformers)
Chapters 10 and 11 of Speech and Language Processing
Presenter: Maximilian Kasy. Slides - W6: Practical implementation
Huggingface NLP course
Presenter: Jeremy Large. Slides, Python notebook - W8: The impact of large language models
ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web
The Debate Over Understanding in AI’s Large Language Models
Presenter: Giulia Caprini
Hilary term 2023
Meeting dates:
- 2:30pm, Tuesdays in even weeks
(That is: 24 Jan, 7 Feb, 21 Feb, 7 Mar)
Manor Road Building, Seminar Room D
Topics:
This term we will be discussing several chapters of the book Prediction, learning, and games by Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi and Gábor Lugosi. This book builds on ideas in game theory and learning theory, and provides a comprehensive framework for online decision-making and adversarial learning.
We will cover the following chapters:
- W2: Chapter 2 (Prediction with expert advice)
- W4: Chapter 4 (Randomized prediction)
- W6: Chapter 6 (Prediction with limited feedback)
- W8: Chapter 7 (Prediction and playing games)
Michaelmas term 2022
No meetings (Max on sabbatical at MIT).
Trinity term 2022
Meeting dates:
- 2:30pm, Tuesdays in even weeks
(That is: 3 May, 17 May, 31 May, 14 June)
Manor Road Building, Seminar Room C
Topics:
- W2
- W4
- W6: (Martin Weidner guest edition)
Hilary term 2022
- Slides for the coordinating meeting: Slides
Topics:
- W2:
- W4:
- W6
- W8